Trouble
by CarlileLovesAnime
Summary: Tsuna has low expectations of his forced summer vacation, having fled home due to dangerous circumstances. But when he starts hanging out with a mysterious girl he sees at a block party, his life undergoes a drastic and beautiful change. AU, eventual 27fem!59.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Trouble  
Author: Carlile (gokuderaa/juuuudaime on Tumblr, CarlileLovesAnime on FFnet and Ao3)  
Rating: heavy T  
Series: **_**Katekyo Hitman Reborn!**_** because I couldn't get out of this fandom if I tried.  
Characters/Pairings: 27fem!59; 69male!96, Iemitsu/Nana, R88, very slight 2795; some genderbent Vongola X Guardians, some gals, some kids, some Kokuyo Gang, the royal twins, and OCs/headcanon characters barely worth mentioning.  
Genre(s): adventure, angst, drama, family, friendship, hurt/comfort, and romance, not necessarily in that order  
Words: over 34K fuck me  
Summary: Tsuna has low expectations of his forced summer vacation, having fled home due to dangerous circumstances. But when he starts hanging out with a mysterious girl he sees at a block party, his life undergoes a drastic and beautiful change. AU, eventual 27fem!59.  
Warnings: physical fighting, attempted rape, blood, smoking, swearing; mentions of drug use, alcohol use, self-harm, and depression.  
Disclaimer: /throws laptop in air/ Do I look like I own KHR?**  
**Other: Two and a half weeks. I suffered at the hands of this stupid story for **_**two and a half weeks**_**. But it's finally done and I am ready to post. **

**This fic is a birthday present for my dear friend Cat (Tumblr user lecatniip), whose birthday was actually almost a month ago, oops. She requested a 5927 fic, and when I asked if she was okay with 27fem!59, she said yes. So I ran with it. All of Tsuna's guardians (not including himself) are genderbent in this, although fem!Hibari doesn't make any appearances. That was just how it worked out. I wanted to try my hand at writing genderbent characters, and hopefully I pulled it off decently. **

**The beta-reader of this fanfic was the lovely, intelligent, perfect, talented, perfect, amazing, PERFECT Zee (byakuzee on Tumblr and Ao3, Snow757 on FFnet), who is so perfect I could just marry her right now. She had suggested breaking this monster-sized fic into chapters so that it would be more digestible, and that is what shall be done. **

~0o.o0o.o0~

It started the same way it usually started, with Dad trudging into the kitchen wearing a mask of sweat and false peace.

"Honey, son," he said with big edgeless smile, "We're going on vacation." He tried subtly to hide his hand behind his back.

Mom and I stared at him, not knowing what to say.

"Finish eating and pack your bags, please." He hunched forward and coughed a few times into his fist, and I exchanged glances with Mom while he took a minute to compose himself. His fake smile became even faker. Furrowing his eyebrows a bit, he nodded at us and retreated into the master bedroom.

I caught a glimpse of the hand he'd been hiding. Fingers were dislocated at the joints, nails had been cut sloppily past the quick, and fresh and dry blood covered most of the skin. My appetite disappeared.

I went to my room and had no idea how long we would be gone, and when I remembered how long it had been since the last time this had happened, I was almost in tears. I thought we had been doing so well. I thought the turbulence was over. I wondered how long we had been unsafe and he'd not told us.

Downstairs, my parents yelled at each other: "You said we would never, ever have to go into hiding again!" "I know, I know." "You promised!" "I know, Nana. I'm sorry." "Where will we even go this time? We don't have the lake house anymore." "—Actually, I never sold the lake house." "Iemitsu, you lied to me!"

They would argue like this nearly every waking minute of the car trip, too. I would be too much a coward to take off my headphones.

All at once I felt crushingly tired. I pushed myself off the floor and grabbed piles of clothes from my dresser without discretion.

~0o.o0o.o0~

**Why does Tsuna's family have to leave? Why is the author's note longer than the chapter content? Why am I asking these questions? **

**Stay tuned for actually regular updates yo. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Told you updates would actually happen! I figured out that if I post one chapter in the morning and one chapter in the afternoon (even though chapter one was also posted this afternoon) then I can have the whole fic out there by Sunday, which is when I'm moving into my dorm. So. **

**Alrighty, part two. Here we go. **

~0o.o0o.o0~

The address I have in my head after all this time. We pull up to the house just after dusk and I recognize the look of the place then too. The caramel brown siding, the whitewashed steps up to the porch. I lug both of my suitcases up those steps, wait for Dad to disengage the fifty-million (eight) locks on the front door, and flip on the light switch just inside the entry. Mom and I cringe at the shadows of critters we see scurrying away from the light. The leather couch, the bookshelf, the bar looking into the kitchen – everything is the same. Dusty, and lonely, but the same.

This isn't a bad home, really. It sits on stilts on a cul-de-sac. Two stories plus an attic, a one-car covered driveway, three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. Right beside the private dock jutting out of the shore, our speedboat bobs in the green water, its shade cover bleached from sun exposure.

The neighborhood is quiet and secluded, which is perfect for our purposes. About a mile from the water is its version of a commercial hub: one vegan grocery, a general store, a touristy shop that sells swimsuits and other tchotchkes, a half-library-half-town hall that also functions as the only radio station and a post office, a tired little diner, a gas station, and a shrine. Nothing here has color except the water and the sky.

Last time I came here, I was able to classify those around this tiny town into three broad categories. One is the handful of permanent residents – hicks and nutcases and kids who don't know any better. Two is nice families often with dogs, quasi-rich couples, and "adventurers", all looking to get away from real life for a while. Three is people like us. People who have made bad choices and now have no choices left to make. So far, we're the only type-threes I know.

I remember our lake house being a happy place for a few years when I was younger. I raced the tides up and down the shoreline and buried things in the sand. The truth came to me accidentally when I was 13, when I found out the place was a retreat in more ways than one. I should have been suspicious earlier, but I liked being ignorant, and deep down I still do.

My parents and I are so exhausted that we do not unpack a thing. Mom almost runs into the master bedroom and slams the door behind her. I crawl up the staircase to my old bedroom, and without turning on the light or anything, collapse backward onto the bed. Dust leaps off the blankets and stirs around me, and I watch it blearily until it all floats to the ceiling and I lose sight of it, and suddenly I fall asleep.

0o.o0o.o0

Dad slept on the couch last night. I know because I have seen the pillows and afghan stacked in a corner by the fireplace, and he keeps massaging his lower back and smiling at me from across the breakfast table. We're eating the potato chips we bought at a rest stop on the way here, since all we had left in the house before were condiments and a forgotten loaf of bread, now turned to rock.

"This will be nice, I think," Dad says. "We can get in a lot of quality family time. We've got board games here, and we can swim and fish and take the boat out for a spin. Yeah, it'll be real nice. I don't have to work all day now. Nana, we can help you with housework as much as you need it. This is going to be the best vacation we've ever had, right, guys?"

Mom leans back in her chair, which creaks a little, scowls at him with her eyes and shoves three or four chips into her mouth. She hums noncommittally over her chewing but does not say anything after she's swallowed and I speak.

"I guess so," I whisper. She sighs and says, "We'll try our best, dear." I don't think they have ever looked so coldly at each other in my presence, my high school sweetheart parents.

We clean up "breakfast" and distribute the suitcases to the rooms where they're supposed to go, and spend a couple hours bustling around, putting away clothes and rediscovering all the quirks and crannies of the house. Halfway through, Mom emerges from her bedroom coughing and flies into a rage. She yells for my father and me, orders him to find the vacuum and shoves a broom into my hands. If we're going to stay here and keep all of our things here, we can't let this place be so filthy, she says – insists. After sweeping I have to scrub every inch of the bathroom at the back of the first floor. By the time I finish, I am so sick of the smell of glass cleaner I want to throw up, and I decide that organizing my own room will have to wait until tomorrow.

That is when there's a knock at the front door. We are all in the same room when we hear it, and shoot frightened looks at one another like our hearts have just simultaneously stopped beating.

Dad takes a cautious step toward the door. He pats the lump in his jacket with his good hand, sticks his finger over his lips and points to a doorway.

Mom and I nod and, avoiding the bay window, skirt around the wall and into the master bedroom. We can hear the locks coming undone, and the two of us step backward further inside.

Mom's heart is pounding – I can feel it, she and I are so close. I fumble for her hand. She laces her fingers between my own and squeezes. She slaps her free palm over her mouth to keep from panting.

Out of nowhere, I remember that I left my pocketknife in the unpacked suitcase in my room, and the air chills around us and I start to sweat.

"Hey!" It's not a shout, grunt or command from my dad, but a warm, friendly greeting. The tone of his voice puts a picture in my head of him grinning, red-faced, spreading his arms. Two voices return the greeting.

It takes Mom and me a few seconds to recognize the other voices, but once we do, without thinking we throw our arms around each other in a sweaty, breathless, chest-throbbing show of relief. She whispers, "Tsu-kun," in a weepy way against my neck.

I hate, hate, hate being this scared. Having this fear constantly hanging over us, restricting everything we do, making everyday occurrences into monsters, flooding into our heads at night so we don't sleep. Just when we think the fear was gone, something like this happens. Have fun on vacation.

Mom and I pull apart. She blinks the coming tears out of her eyes and pads out of the bedroom. I blow air out of my mouth, direct my eyes at the ceiling and give my heart a moment to slow down.

The visitors with the familiar voices turn out to be our next-door neighbors, the Nagishis. (A married couple – the husband always wears expensive shirts, the wife always acts like she has something better to do than whatever she is presently doing. They have five kids between them, a blended family. The wife has the oldest, her son Aoi, who is my age, and two other sons, Itsuki and Kouki, all from a previous marriage; the husband has a girl, Shinju, and a boy, Satoru, also from a previous marriage. A classic type-two family. No dog, though.)

Mom and Mrs. Nagishi are seated at the breakfast table, prattling, when I come out of the bedroom. Not all the color has returned to my mother's face yet. On the counter there's a large glass pan covered with aluminum foil, a gift from the couple. The sight alone of real food makes me smile a little.

The teakettle starts to whistle. Mom asks me to handle it.

"It's nice to see you, Tsunayoshi-kun," Mrs. Nagishi says when I set a cup in front of her. "God, how long has it been? A year?"

"A year and a half," I answer. _A year and a half_.

She grins. "You haven't changed a bit."

I feign a chuckle, and then I excuse myself to go see where the men are and what they're doing. Dad and Mr. Nagishi are standing in the living room, and they're prattling, too, about sports or some other junk. They've already broken out the beer. I manage to escape upstairs before their conversation demands any more from me than a wave to the guest.

I don't really like people. I'm not anxious, per se – at least not anymore. I'm just introverted. Social situations exhaust me quickly. I have always been wary of people, and I'm not sure whether that is my nature or just how I was raised. It's one of the few ways my dad and I are alike. He's amicable only if he knows the person well – or is drunk.

I busy myself with unpacking for about 45 minutes. My pockets are too small to hide my knife without seeming conspicuous, so I end up changing pants. At last I open the blinds over my bedroom window and peek out at the lake view. The twins from the other side of the neighborhood, Bel and Ras (a little older than I am, type-ones, tactless, absolute loons, practically royalty here), share a paddleboat. Their mouths are moving. Suddenly the boat stops and Bel pushes Ras overboard. They splash each other. I watch them until Ras gives up, swims to shore and races the paddleboat home on foot. Bel kicks and kicks, but just goes in circles. Finally I ease the blinds shut.

0o.o0o.o0

Neighborhood-wide festivals like this are a common occurrence. Everybody from blocks far and near gathers at one of the bigger houses in the area, bringing food. Kids run around and stuff their faces and jump fully clothed into the water. Adults chat idly and drink. And teenagers like me stand at the outskirts of the crowd, watching all the activity, wondering where they belong in this setting, and holding out hope that some unknowing sap will approach them with the intent to, as teenagers do, hang out.

I felt nervous earlier, when my parents told me they had accepted the Nagishis' invitation to a community get-together the day afterward, but I was able to rationalize it. So many people are here, it's easy to slip into the masses unnoticed. Nobody of consequence would ever imagine coming near this area. Besides, I'm not my parents' babysitter. I shuffle my feet a bit and take a sip of tepid lemon-lime soda from the cup in my hand. Somehow, I still don't feel entirely at ease.

Two small children run in my general way. A shriek and a laugh. "Tail Head! Tail Head!" The girl with a braid clenches her fists and breaks into a sprint, changing direction just a few yards away to dodge me. The other girl, chasing her, is not so graceful.

It's rather embarrassing, getting knocked onto one's butt by a five-year old. Especially when one saw it coming. It draws looks.

The braided girl notices that her friend isn't following her, screeches to a halt, and frets and blushes from afar.

"Don't get in my way," the clumsy girl grumbles. She hops up and dusts off the front of her cow print shirt. Then she rushes away. I moan a bit for my tailbone and rise onto my feet. My plastic cup is empty on the ground, its former contents now soaking into my shirt and shorts.

A woman with a massive mop of black curls extends her arm toward me. "I am so sorry." She groans, mostly to herself, "My daughter's hopeless."

"It's okay," I whimper. I can sense the young ones huddled together, staring at me from the side. The second I turn toward them they scramble away.

I stand there for a few minutes more, until it's obvious that people have stopped talking about me. The soda on my clothes becomes cold and sticky. I shudder despite myself when the wetness touches my skin. I look down, and in the dim light I can see the expanding borders between the two, wet and dry, and that if nobody knew better they might think I peed myself. I sigh. There was nothing here for me to do in the first place. I figure I should go back to my own home, change clothes and go to bed.

I bend over to pick up the cup I dropped so that I can throw it away, and after a bit of disoriented circling I decide on a route to my family's lake house, five blocks west. I let Mom and Dad know that I'm leaving, too. (I'll never again make the mistake of not informing them when I come and go.)

As I keep walking I find that party territory extends through the yards of the next couple houses. Lanterns on posts dot the beach surface, a father and his two children splash in the black water, the crowd has not thinned at all. I bob and weave between the people, and pass almost undetected.

I get away from the party mass, at last, to where most houses are dark. Around the inner side of a column, hidden from most people's view, is a couple, as I can see from the far end of the yard. I approach with plans to duck away from them when our paths cross. But the closer I get, the more trouble seems to unfold.

I don't know who the girl is, but the guy with her is Bel. I can tell from his wavy blond hair. His twin brother, with straight blond hair, stalks over to them as well. Both boys grin in the most malicious way and start talking like they're finishing each other's sentences. She yells and swears at them. The poor girl makes a move like she wants to back away, but she's already standing right up against the pole. She instinctively grabs onto it as if it will help. Ras notes the movement and, lightning quick, clutches her wrist and holds it awkwardly to her side, pinning it to the column. The boys inch closer.

My pace quickens greatly. There is no way this situation can end well for her, unless somebody intervenes. And I can't just walk past now. I have to be that somebody.

I force my way between the two boys. "Back off," I growl.

Ras' grip on the girl's wrist slackens. The twins eye me from beneath their thick bangs. Their smiles do not dissipate or change.

"Well," Bel says with a laugh, "Look who it is. Shrimp-ayoshi Sawada."

"About time you came back into town," Ras purrs.

Bel shoves me backward and out of the way with a jerk of the shoulder. "Get lost." He and Ras turn toward the girl. Bel brings his face close to the side of hers.

For a second, the twins pause, and it's clear a realization comes over them. They look at me again. "Unless, that is, you want to join us," Bel suggests. The boys snicker.

My throat and skin grow scorching hot. I frown. "No!" I clench my fists and stomp one foot after the other on the ground. "Get off her right now before _I_ make you."

The twins exchange glances and then laugh their chilling, cat-sneeze laughs. They focus on me again. Ras puts his free hand on his hip, and Bel eases away from the girl's face.

"Okay," Ras teases. He stifles a laugh. "Seriously. You're not going to do anything. Go away."

My eyes wander for a split second – and I see the girl glaring at me, the kind of glare like she wants to say something important but cannot, like she is sending me mental wavelengths, or maybe she wants me to leave.

I take one large step forward. My teeth clench so hard my head spins.

Without thinking, I plunge a hand into my pocket, undo the sheath snap, and pull out my knife.

The twins' smiles vanish. Bel jumps back nearly a foot. I twist the knife slightly so that the blade catches what little light is out here. I do not know how I look, if anybody else is watching – I barely know what I am doing, but for a moment, pure righteous power surges through me, and it takes all the control I have to keep from lunging forward and thrusting this knife into one of the twins' neck.

Ras lifts his chin high and studies the blade. "Oh," he says, singsong, keeping composure. "Interesti—"

Ras flies backward. He clutches his stomach, spits on the ground, and collapses onto his knees.

Before I can even react, there's a sound of tearing fabric. The girl's leg swings out to the side, hitting Bel just below the chest and swiping him away. He stumbles and falls onto his back.

"You – dirty peasant! You worthless whore!" Ras pushes himself off the wall behind him and rushes at the girl. She meets him with a knee to his gut. He grunts and pulls back, and while he's staggering she grabs a handful of his hair, and pushes his head down and knees him in the face. He falls, blood gushing from his nose and mouth.

Bel tries to grab her from behind, but she grips him with both hands and twists herself around to face him, and while holding his wrists, kicks him in the groin, stomach and neck in rapid succession. She uses her leverage on his arms to push him back, and he goes down without a struggle.

She stomps toward Bel though, still. She's not done with him yet. She kicks him in the side repeatedly with the toe of her spike-covered platform heels, screaming down at him, adding another hit at every other word. "Don't you ever touch me like that! Don't you ever call me worthless! I will fuck you up! You understand? I will fucking kill you!" He rolls onto his other side and moans incomprehensibly for mercy, and coughs blood onto the grass.

The girl bends down, grabs his top arm, pulls it up and twists it until it cracks. She holds onto the arm and delivers one final, hard kick to his back.

"Don't you _ever_, fucker." She lets go of his arm. It falls limp onto the ground behind his back.

She whips her head around and snarls at Ras, who does not even try to move. Her bright red lips scrunch to one side. Then she spits onto the concrete beside Ras' head.

At once, her back straightens and she turns toward me and gasps. There are smears of blood on her arms, her legs, her dress.

I'm frozen there. I can't move. This whole time, since she dealt her first blow, I have not been able to move. I just watched her kick and scream, unable to help her or stop her or even think.

I wonder for a second if she is angry at me. But the look on her face is one of apology, shock, maybe fear. It's as if she does not want me to be her witness, or expected me to be gone by now, or thinks I might turn this knife on her. I blink a few times at her, then gradually lower my hands and slip my knife back into its sheath.

The girl stands there, a deer in headlights, for another minute. The color leaves and returns to her face, and she scans me up and down.

She takes a couple steps backward, eyes trained on me – and turns and dashes into the darkness.

I squint into the dark in the general direction she fled, but cannot spot her at all. I look down at Ras trying to snort the blood back into his nose and Bel writhing in the grass. I consider, for a moment – a very brief moment –, calling somebody, maybe an ambulance, for these twins.

Finally, I sigh and shrug my shoulders, and strut off the porch. I figure they deserve it.

~0o.o0o.o0~

**I don't care for Bel in canon or here sorry. **


	3. Chapter 3

They got stitches – the twins did, along with other medical treatments last night, at the hospital twenty miles away. The news that some mystery-assailant beat them near unconscious is all over the neighborhood by midmorning the very next day. "Who would do such a thing?" "Why would anybody lay a hand on those boys?"

I flip the page in my manga and blow on the surface of my tea, trying to hide the sweat pricking at the back of my neck. I couldn't sleep a wink last night. I told my parents, eating breakfast now, that I had just woken up early.

"I'm sure they'll find the culprit sooner or later," Mom says. "This is such a small town. You can hardly breathe without everyone else knowing." Funny Mom should say such a thing, knowing what we have to hide and have kept hidden so far.

I finish my tea, holding my tongue, set my mug in the sink and stretch. I need some fresh air, some white morning sun. I saunter onto the back deck and to the chairs near the wooden balustrade, overlooking the water, and am about to sit when I hear a voice from the next house over.

"Tsuna-kun. Wow. It's been a long time since I've seen you." It's a soft voice, and I recognize it right away.

Aoi Nagishi, wearing a thin white shirt and black swimtrunks. His brothers and stepbrother lob a basketball at one another on the other end of their deck.

"Hi, Chrome." Mom told me yesterday about Aoi's new nickname, new identity. The guy certainly has changed since the last time I stayed here. His hair is longer and thinner, he wears an eyepatch on his right side, and he is wheelchair-bound and has to carry all these bags of fluid and little machines with him – but I can see just from his face that he has found a special kind of peace with his life. Now he's more outspoken, apparently, and he has a boyfriend who appreciates him.

For some reason, I find myself in a less-hermitlike mood. I smile and make my way to him, descending and ascending stairs and pushing my way through the gate onto the Nagishis' deck.

This mood does not last long, of course. I ask him how he is and he says he's grand, and just then a breeze plows past us and he closes his eyes and smiles sweetly into it and lets it play with his hair. He opens his eyes and asks how I am. I tell him I'm all right. The conversation drops and fizzles out like an antacid tablet.

We listen to the three boys bicker about whether a fly ball was due to a bad throw or a clumsy catch, until one of them marches out of their circle, grabs the ball, heaves it at another boy's head and calls for a do-over.

"You know, a lot has changed since the last time your family was here," he says. He points his chin in my direction, looking beyond my shoulder. "Like, remember that elderly couple that used to live in the last house on the road? Your other next-door neighbors?"

I nod and glance back at it. Mint green siding, sprawling hydrangea bushes. The furniture on the back deck is different – more modern. "Yeah," I mumble.

"Well, the husband had a major stroke literally a week after you guys left." I think about the couple. I forget their names, but they always wore traditional Japanese garb, and the woman was an avid gardener. Sometimes, walking down the street, I could hear the old man yelling xenophobic slurs at his television inside the house.

"So," Chrome continues, "The couple decided to sell their house here, since it's all but impossible for them to go on vacation now with him being a vegetable. Someone else bought the place. Another couple – a lot younger. They're engaged. They're super-nice."

"Cool," I say. The house went from one type-two to another.

He smiles. "Yeah, and this girl moved in with them too. She's our age. She's…" He trails off, and his eye rolls toward the sky, which he searches for the right words. "…Kind of hard to talk to, actually."

I meet Chrome's eye, sliding my hands into my pockets and shrugging, and his face brightens just a little. "I can introduce you, if you want," he offers. I affirm, and without saying anything else we part briefly. I walk around the side of his house, my shoes squishing in the wet mix of sand and dirt. He goes through the inside of his home and meets me on the sidewalk out front. He whoops as he sails down the wheelchair ramp off his porch.

0o.o0o.o0

I cannot help but flinch when this man answers the door.

He is tall, with curly sideburns, and he wears a black fedora, black suit, black shoes. The brim of his hat shadows his eyes. And there is a recognizable mass in the side pocket of his trousers.

"Oh. Ciaossu." He knows right away who Chrome is. He smiles. One of his incisors is made of gold.

"Hi, Mister Rinato," Chrome says. The corner of his mouth lifts and he cocks his head for a split second. "You, uh, probably know what I'm here for." He chuckles nervously.

Mr. Rinato pivots a bit, hand still on the doorknob. "Of course." He turns fully, facing into the house – his muscular neck cranes. From what I can see, the entry room and its furniture have neutral colors and clean lines. He yells, "Hayase! Somebody's here for you!"

The man faces us again. "She wasn't feeling too well last night, just to warn you," he says flatly.

"I'm pretty tired, myself," I say. I try to smile. Mr. Rinato does not respond.

The girl drags herself across the entry room and peeks at us from behind the doorway. She's lithe, pale; her black concert T-shirt has been ripped and tied into a spaghetti-strap top, and a series of bands and cuffs cover half her forearms. Her face is pretty. She has short silver hair parted down the middle.

There is no mistake. She is the girl from last night.

She notices me, too, instantly, and her eyes widen a bit. But she has already appeared to us and knows she cannot back out anymore.

"Good morning, Gokudera-san," Chrome says with a grin.

The walking shadow that is Mr. Rinato saunters away from the door, back into the house. He mumbles to the girl, "Don't stay out too late," or something along those lines. She exhales – I can see her chest fall beneath her shirt – and stands straight, her full self showing in the doorway. She's already wearing shoes.

"I'm sorry to come over so unexpectedly," Chrome says, "But I have to go to physical therapy soon and, uh. I'm pretty sure you two haven't met." He gestures toward me, open palm facing upward. "This is Tsuna Sawada. He's staying in the house between us." Chrome then looks to his side, at me, and I face him for a few seconds. "Her name is Hayase Gokudera."

I start to feel a hot, wet discomfort on the sides and back of my neck. I consciously change whatever expression I have on my face into the warmest smile I can muster. One of my hands lifts out of my pocket. Holding my breath, I kind-of-subtly wipe the sweat off my palm and then extend the hand toward Gokudera.

"It's nice to meet you," I say, realizing how stiff and awkward I sounded as soon as my mouth shuts.

She just glares at my hand as if she has no idea what the gesture means.

"Nice to meet you too," she mutters at last. She _conspicuously_ does not touch me, but eyes me up and down from the doorway. I shrink backward a little and lower my arm.

Chrome, immediately recognizing the chill between the two of us, squirms in his chair. "How are you this morning, then, Gokudera-san?" he asks.

"Hungry as hell," Gokudera replies. "Bianchi left for groceries a few minutes ago." The rasp in her voice counters her melodic Italian accent. I wonder whether she's sick: I suffer from allergy problems here too, in the spring and autumn.

Chrome forces a laugh. "Ah, cool." He throws a quick glance at me, like he expects me to add something. "You know, I'm actually curious. What do you guys eat?" he asks.

Gokudera cocks one fine gray eyebrow and lowers the other. She hesitates a bit, not knowing quite how to answer.

"Well, Bianchi's a chef, so we eat whatever sounds good to us – but it's always really fancy, even just at home."

"I didn't know that about her," Chrome says, his face brightening.

"Yeah, it's nice getting three square meals a day."

Chrome laughs and says, "I would think so," and laughs some more. He's trying his best. Gokudera does not make any noise, but her expression softens a little, if only for a moment. When she glimpses at me again, her eyebrows knit and lips grow taut. I figure it's an indirect visual cue warning me to go away. I spread my feet shoulder-width apart and tilt my head slightly, looking straight at her to hint that I will not.

An alarm sound rings out from Chrome's direction, catching all of us off guard. Chrome grabs his phone case, reads the message on the screen, and sighs.

"I've got to go," he groans. He turns off the alarm, sets his cell phone in his lap and grips both the wheels of his chair. "I'll probably catch up with you guys in a couple hours. We could go to the diner or swim or something, maybe." Chrome turns and heads off, waving goodbye to us. I keep my eyes on him until he reaches the bottom of the ramp up to his porch.

When I face Gokudera again, she's frowning at me. I have to force myself to not jump back. I steel my wits and regard her for a moment. Her legs are tight with muscle, her shoulders are narrow and her breasts are small. There's a large scar starting at her right outer ankle and running all the way up her calf. Her ears are lined with piercings, and her bottom lip and left side of her nose are pierced as well. Her lipstick is a dark reddish brown, her cheeks are defined with tan-colored blush, her foundation makes her skin radiate, her eyes are framed with a thick layer of liner all the way around, her eyeshadow fades from dark gray to pink.

I can feel my throat constrict a bit. "You…" I speak without realizing, and her frown deepens. "You wear a lot of makeup."

"And you're short," she quips. Her arms cross over her chest.

I shrug my shoulders. "I'm just saying," I stammer. "I mean, it's your face. You can do what you want with it."

She grunts, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Her lips straighten and she gazes off to the side for a moment, facing into the increasingly steady wind. At first, I look in the same direction she does, but somehow I end up with my eyes on her again. I have never heard of the band on her shirt. Judging from the graphic, it's probably a rock band.

The more I study her profile, the more I can tell what she is thinking. She's biting her lip and blinking rapidly. Her hands are quivering. Her standoffishness, her rudeness is just an act. She does not want me to know this, but it's clear. I terrify her.

I shuffle one foot forward, but stop at a few inches. Chest aching, I raise my arms in a sign of innocuousness.

"You don't have to worry," I say.

Gokudera's attention snaps back to me instantly.

"I'm not going to tell anybody about last night."

Her skin pales, and the quivering spreads throughout her body. She blinks hard at me. "You're not?"

I slowly shake my head.

She stares into my face, frozen for a minute, two minutes. A great relief then washes over her. She peers down at her shoes and her bangs fall in a way that covers most of her expression.

"Thank you," she says.

All the sudden she sinks to the ground, sitting on the foyer floor and placing her feet just on the outside of the threshold. She sets her elbows on her bent knees, the jewelry on her arms clattering together, meshes her fingers into her hair and holds the sides of her head. "My family will kill me – _kill _me if I get another legal charge. I'm supposed to be cleaning myself up…"

I stand in the middle of her porch, watching her, not knowing what else to say or do.

Eventually she rustles her own hair – her whole head turns into a flurry of silver fire, and then she pulls both hands away and lets it fall back into place. It's thin hair, pure white at the roots. She jerks her head to the side to get the bangs out of her eyes, and pushes air through her lips.

I draw in a large breath and open my mouth, but it takes a few more tries before I can get words to come out. "I, uh, do think it was very impressive, what you did."

"Really?" She lifts her gaze toward me.

I nod.

"You don't think I was too rough on them?" she asks.

I wave my arms wildly, taking a step back without thinking, and shake my head. "Oh, no way. In fact, I'm sorry I didn't help you. They deserved a beating – they're total jerks. Besides, you were defending yourself." My arms drop to my sides.

For the first time that I have seen, Gokudera smiles. It's the kind of smile one could miss looking at only the mouth. The corners of her lips turn just barely upward, but her eyes narrow and her nose crinkles.

She brings her head higher, indicating me somewhat. "Do you still have that knife?" she asks.

I nod, and with very little hesitation pull the knife, still sheathed, out of my largest pocket. She squints at it a bit and then pushes herself off the floor to a stand, and approaches me – cautiously, focusing on the knife.

"No way," she says, half-chuckling.

"What?" Instinctively I glance at the weapon in my hand.

"I carry the exact same knife – same brand, size, model, everything."

My mouth drops open. She seems to take it as a sign I don't believe her. Her eyebrows furrow. "Well, obviously, it's not on me _right now_. These clothes don't have big pockets like yours do."

I smile and shake my head up and down. "Right, right." I slip the knife into my pocket.

We hear Mr. Rinato's voice from inside the house, and Gokudera can see him when she looks over her shoulder through the doorway, but I cannot. "Your friends can come inside or you all can leave, I don't care, but please close the door," he says. "The air conditioner is straining."

Gokudera and I meet each other's faces, blinking simultaneously. For a second we are lost for ideas. I don't know what it is about this morning that has put me in such a social mood.

"Want to go to the gas station?" she asks. She smiles at me, a big fake grin, almost all of her teeth exposed, her eyes narrowed into slits.

If I remember right, that's where the teenagers here often go – to grab sodas, snack on junk food, loiter in the parking lot, and observe the strange road-trippers that stumble into the place for actual gasoline.

I feel a thud against the inside of my sternum. I steal a glance at my house, the curtains closed inside the windows. My shoulders lift and fall. "Sure."

0o.o0o.o0

The next morning, Gokudera shows up at my door without warning. "Good morning, Tenth! What do you want to do today?" The spaghetti straps of her tank top peek out from underneath her shirt collar, and she balances half a cigarette between her lips. I'm not even dressed yet.

I blink once at her. _Tenth? _

Behind me, I can hear my father sit on the sofa, turn on TV – the news, and start crunching cereal.

"Uh…" I slide my hand off the doorknob and drop it to my side. "I don't know," I say slowly. "I was just going to chill today, really."

She grins and plucks the cigarette from between her teeth. Smoke pours out of her mouth as she speaks. "Ah, okay. That's good, that's good. It's important to relax, you know. Conserve your energy."

"Yeah," I reply, trailing off. I lean forward and try to look around a little, but all I see are green lawns and the empty street.

Dad yells from inside the house, "Hey, Tsuna, who is it?"

I turn around and open my mouth, but before I can even make a noise, she steps forward and peers into the house over my shoulder.

"Hi, Mister Sawada," she says. "I'm Hayase Gokudera, your new neighbor next door." She takes care to hold the crumbling cigarette over the concrete outside, her arm extended behind her.

I exhale and it turns into something like a chuckle. My dad has been wearing the same ratty white shirt and boxers since yesterday, and he hasn't shaved, either.

He smiles at her and gives her a wave. "Well, nice to meet you, missy," he says. His hand falls onto the couch cushion. "Sorry we haven't been very social."

"Oh, you're fine." She straightens herself, bringing both of her feet together, and glances in all directions. "Your house is really nice," she says to me.

I bite the inside of my cheek and my shoulders droop, and I look to my dad for a response, but he's already enthralled in a story about some wildfire.

"Thanks," I sigh. I glance down at my Pikachu pajama bottoms and notice that one strap of her sandals is held together with tape. She's still smiling when I return my eyes to her face.

"Um, you can come in if you want," I say. "I have to change first, though, if you don't mind."

She takes a large step back and shakes her head. "Oh, no, that's okay, Tenth! I can just wait out here for you."

"Are you sure? It's getting hotter and hotter outside." I angle my head slightly more toward the sun.

"I'll be fine," she says, waving her free hand.

I close the front door hesitantly, keeping an eye on her the whole time. The second it latches, my dad turns and looks at me. "She's a pretty one," he says. I roll my eyes as I pass him.

Upstairs, Mom is seated at the desk in the nook by my room, talking on the landline with Grandpa. There's some sort of online word game on the desktop screen in front of her, and she clicks on a couple tiles and stops, clicks and stops. I stand and watch her for a minute. She finally notices and spins a little in the chair and shoots a smile at me. I smile back and then retreat into my bedroom.

When I peer through one of the blinds while pulling up one leg of my shorts, I see a very distinctive yellow pontoon. I yank a T-shirt over my head and start racing down the stairs, pulling down the hem as I go.

I open the door so suddenly that Gokudera jumps back, even though she tries to hide it.

"Come with me," I say, and with no other words I close the front door and dart around the side of the house to the back deck. I'm going so fast that I have to slam into the balustrade to stop myself. I grab onto the railing with one hand and wave the other frantically in the air. Gokudera trots up to me, standing just behind my right shoulder. I don't even have to look at her to know she's confused.

The pontoon boat draws a little closer before the people on it recognize me, and by now I can clearly make out their faces.

"_Sawada_!" One of them races to the head of the boat and pumps her fists in the air – and I know exactly who it is. She's loud, she's fiery, she's an amateur boxer: Mitsuko Sasagawa.

I lower my arm and grin and laugh. Mitsuko runs to the back of the boat, where her aunt is steering, and right away it changes direction toward my house.

"Who's that?" Gokudera asks.

I glance at her over my shoulder. "Just some old friends of mine."

Well, they're a bit more than that. Somehow the friendships I've made in this stupid small town are more precious than most of the ones I hold back home. Maybe it's the romance of seeing them only a little at a time. Maybe I like distractions here. Maybe, for some reason, hanging out with these people in particular makes me feel cool and normal, so unlike me, for once.

I run barefoot down to the dock just as the boat eases up to the edge, and help tie it to some of the posts. Gokudera watches everything from the deck, keeping her distance.

Mitsuko bounds off the boat and up to me. She holds out a fist. "It's extremely great to see you! How's it going?" She laughs boisterously, and I return the greeting in my own wimpy way, tapping my knuckles to hers. "I'm alright."

Three others disembark the pontoon and approach me. Chinatsu Yamamoto is tall and graceful, a softball champ, and she laughs at everything. Haru Miura wears a one-piece suit with some ridiculous design. And Mitsuko has an adorable younger sister, Kyoko. They all missed me.

I don't give much information when they ask what I did while I was away, so they gladly fill me in on all that has happened here. Aoi Nagishi got in a car accident (which I already found out), the Kurokawas moved away, the de la Stellas struck riches and moved away as well, Dino Cavallone got engaged, the Evil Twins finally received their comeuppance a couple days ago (which I also knew, but pretended not to), and right about now these four are enjoying a boat ride.

That's when I hear the quiet creak of the five steps down from the deck to the dock. I turn around and we all see the silver-haired girl descending. She freezes when all of our eyes snap to her.

Chinatsu gasps and a crooked grin halves her face. "Ooh, I know who you must be! You're the new girl!" She saunters forward, arms open, and then scoops her up and squeezes her. The annoyed, offended, _massively uncomfortable_ expression on Gokudera's face says everything she cannot. I clench my teeth.

"Hey, yeah, Chrome told me about you," Kyoko says, pointing to her. Chinatsu releases her grip. Judging from the deep frown on her face, Gokudera is trying her level best to not explode.

Kyoko looks at me for a second – a long second, God, she's so pretty – and then back at Gokudera and says, "Why don't you two join us? We're just cruising around. We might stop and swim, too." She turns toward her aunt at the wheel and asks if adding us would exceed the weight limit, and her aunt, without even looking at us, replies in the negative.

I nod, folding my hands in front of me. "Yeah, sure!" I say.

But I look back at Gokudera and she furrows her eyebrows at me and thinks for a moment, and finally averts her eyes toward the water.

"I guess I'll go with you," she mutters.

I run into the house to grab my phone and tell my parents where I'm going, and then we untie the boat, climb on, and start into the lake body again.

Gokudera sits right beside me. She doesn't say anything, but she wears a determined look on her face, focusing on the water ahead of us. Every once in a while, she steals a glance at me. I'm pretty sure it's because the wind keeps whipping my hair around and hitting her in the face with it.

Mitsuko tucks one arm behind her seat, crosses her thick legs, and asks Gokudera where she is from.

She sits up a little straighter and glances about for a second as if she heard wrong, but there's still a residual anger in her face. "I'm not from Japan," she says.

"Hm." Mitsuko nods once.

A pause ensues, in which all we hear is the motor and the spray of the water.

Chinatsu leans forward and kicks in and out, and she presses her palms against the plastic seat cushion and arches her back so her breasts stick out, and she aims one of her Grin Beams in Gokudera's direction. The girl has never been too keen with social cues. "I like your accent – and your earrings. They're pretty cool." She cocks her head to the side. "Are you Spanish? You sound like you're from a Latin country."

Gokudera's hand instinctively flies to her ear. She plays a bit with a sterling silver dragon anchored into her earlobe. "I'm Italian," she says flatly. Something tells me Gokudera is not very socially adept either, but has the opposite problem.

Chinatsu claps her hands together. "Oh, wow, that's really cool!" she marvels. "I've never met an Italian before."

The boat hits a large wave and jumps. Gokudera lowers her hand. A smirk comes over her. "Well, they're pretty common where I grew up," she says.

I immediately turn my head and lean a little over the side of the boat, pressing my hand to my mouth. I try to stifle a laugh, but the effort is wasted. After a few seconds I face back into the boat and catch the tail end of Chinatsu's next question of what she likes to do for fun.

Gokudera sighs. "A whole lotta nothin', lately." She leans back in the chair and crosses one leg over the other. She takes a short moment to scan everybody. "What can you people even do here, anyway?"

I know they're all type-twos, except the Sasagawas' aunt, who lives here permanently, but frequently leaves for weightlifting competitions and such. Mitsuko and Kyoko's parents dump them on her for three weeks or a month in the summer and at other random times during the rest of the year. Chinatsu and Haru's families share a house for vacation purposes – largely, they're weekenders.

The four of them exchange looks and then shrug and laugh.

"I, ah, couldn't tell you, honestly," Haru says, drawing breath.

Suddenly the boat slows. We all look out at the floating trampoline not too far ahead of us – and there are kids jumping on it, including the one who knocked me over at the festival. Our speed reduces to a crawl as we pass the structure.

"The weather sure is pretty here, though." Gokudera is looking at me or past me, I can't tell, but she's talking to me and she seems more at ease than before.

I face her. "Yeah, it is," I say. A smile creeps up on me. I don't even feel it till it's there.

We start gazing at the landscape and the houses that trickle past us, now that we're moving slower. This is the wealthier part of the neighborhood, where the forest is thicker and somehow one can see more stars at night. The houses are huge and elaborate.

There's one home with back walls made almost entirely of glass, the furniture and people inside perfectly exposed. A gorgeous woman sunbathes on the deck next door. Across the lake is the Hibari family's house, with traditional Japanese landscaping around the sides and front, and three jet skis parked neatly along the dock.

Mitsuko, Kyoko and Haru clamor to one corner of the boat without warning. Mitsuko points at something. Haru turns and eyes Gokudera and me. "Hey, look, it's the Evil Twins' house," she says, and she quickly returns to gawking.

I can feel Gokudera tense just at the mention of them. I turn toward her and study her profile a moment. Her face is paler and nearly her entire bottom lip has been sucked into her mouth. I glance downward and her hand is balled so tightly into a fist that the blood vessels protrude from her skin.

Grunting, I rise from my seat and walk over to the others, sticking onto the end of the mass. Chinatsu closes in on the other side of me.

I recognize the house right away and see the twins on their top deck. We're far enough away from them that we can't see their expressions, but Ras, lounging shirtless on a chaise, flops onto his side. Bel emerges from the house, stepping through a sliding glass door. One of his arms is in a sling. When the others notice this, at about the same time I do, they ooh and snicker, and Mitsuko grins from ear to ear and nudges me with her elbow. I feel somewhat of a sense of pride, but it vanishes quickly. We all retreat back to our respective seats, and the boat starts to accelerate again.

"Oh, man," Mitsuko says. Her sheer morbid jubilance is almost bright enough for the whole town to see. She opens one bandaged hand and punches the palm of it with the other. "I'll tell you what, I have no idea who beat the crap outta those guys, but I extremely wish I was the one who did it."

The scene dangles in the front of my mind like it's happening right now. The twins' canine teeth showing in their grins, their voices, Ras' fingers around Gokudera's wrist. My knife gleaming in starlight. The thud of shoe hitting skin, sounds of anguish. Blood on her dress.

Gokudera's fist quakes violently beside her on the seat, and her eyes are squeezed shut, as if she is a child and the monster in her room will go away if she cannot see it. I lift my hand and extend it to her, but cannot bring myself to touch her.

Kyoko chuckles. "Tell me about it," she adds, patting her sister on the back of the shoulder.

Mitsuko punches her hand again and hunches forward. Her wide smile becomes feral. "I'd tear those _jerks _a new one," she boasts. She twists her knuckles back and forth against her palm for emphasis.

The town has mixed reviews on the twins – some (mostly the other type-ones) think they're superstars, some see them as annoying but harmless, and some harbor mostly unfounded animosity toward them. The town's general opinion on whether they rightfully earned their beating is about as ambivalent. But there is one thing every person wants to know: who did it. And the answer sits right beside me, biting so forcefully on her lip that blood is starting to pool under her teeth.

From now until we drop her off at her house, Hayase Gokudera does not say a word.

0o.o0o.o0

It's a surprise, I'll admit, that Gokudera shows up at my doorstep the exact same time the next morning. Again, she's already dressed, and luckily, this time, so am I.

"Hi, Tenth," she says. She grins awkwardly and sticks her cigarette into her mouth. It's almost a stub now. One of her shoes scrapes along the concrete, lifts behind her and kicks the ground. Her hands go behind her back.

My head rolls backward slightly. "Good morning," I reply, raising my eyebrows.

The two of us stand there for a minute in silence. She hits the toe of her Rocket Dog against the ground again and again.

Finally she takes the last drag on her cigarette, pulls it from between her lips, squeezes the filter out of it, pockets the filter, drops it and crushes it with her heel. She kicks the flat orange debris off to the side.

"I'll take care of that later, sorry," she says. She grins a second time.

"It's cool," I stammer. I look over my shoulder to see if my mom has come into the entry room, but it's just my imagination.

I meet her eyes again. "Do you want to come in?" I ask.

Her face just lights up.

"Could I, really?" she says, her voice climbing higher and higher.

I nod. "Yeah." For a second I wonder if there's any reason I shouldn't let her inside.

Her arms bend and she clenches loose fists in her excitement, but before she even takes a step her jaw drops open and she gasps and covers her mouth with her fingertips. "Oh, hell – hold on just a minute, please, Tenth. I'll be right back." She flashes me an index finger, walks backward and then hurries off my porch.

I lower one eyebrow and watch her leave. "Okay," I call weakly to her.

Two minutes later she returns to my porch with a glass bowl capped with foil.

"Here," she says, and she holds it out to me. I take it in both hands without thinking.

She shrugs. "I couldn't just waltz into someone's home unannounced and not bring them a gift."

"Thank you," I blurt.

I shift the bowl to one hand and close the front door with the other after she steps inside. Gokudera admires the entry room for a moment – the robin's egg blue paint on the walls, the cream-colored leather sofa, the scuffed oak floor, the bar, the small flatscreen hanging over the fireplace, the bookshelf filled with decorations and my mom's favorite trashy romance novels. Her aura is jumpy – she tries hard to contain her excitement from simply being in here, a reaction that I don't really understand. It's just the living room.

I squint at the tinfoil atop the bowl as if concentrating on it will give me X-ray vision. Gathering my lips to one side of my mouth, I pinch a corner of the foil and lift it off, careful to not tear it. Gokudera brings her attention to me. Inside the bowl is a huge pile of baked goods.

She watches me closely as I take out and inspect one of them. I scowl despite myself. "What is this?" I ask.

"Biscotti – they're kinda like cookies," she explains. "Bianchi made a shit-ton of them yesterday because she was in the mood for sweets, so."

"Hm." I bring it to my lips, bite off a third of it, crunch it—.

"Oh, my God." My eyes widen. I swallow the remnants inside my mouth and meet her eyes. "That is _awesome_!"

She wrings her hands together, nodding a little. "You like it, really?"

"I love it!" I exclaim. I shove the rest of the biscotto into my mouth. Her cheeks turn pink and she looks off to the side, almost embarrassed.

Mom walks into the room as if something is on her mind but it's not an urgent task. She notices me. "Hi, Tsu-kun," she says quietly.

I take the bowl by the base and hold it in her direction, fully extending my arm. "Mom, you have to try this!" My mother stops in her tracks and comes toward me. She takes the bowl with both hands and peeks into it – her eyes start to glitter – and she takes out one biscotto without hesitation. She speaks with her mouth full, just like I did.

"That is really good," she says, her head bobbing up and down. She looks at me, at Gokudera, back at me, back at Gokudera, and swallows. She points to her. "Did you bring these over?"

"Yes, ma'am," Gokudera says. She folds her hands in front of her.

Mom hums in approval and her eyes glow more. "Did you make them?" she asks.

"Oh, no, ma'am. My sister did." Gokudera shakes her head, waving her hands side to side as well. She seems tense.

"Well, please give her my regards," Mom says. She folds the foil over the open part over the bowl. Then she points at her again. "You're one of the new neighbors, isn't that right?" she asks.

"Yes, ma'am," Gokudera says with a nod. Until now I had no idea she could be so polite. She sticks out a hand – the bracelets dangle from her wrist and the ring on her pinky slides down just a bit. "Hayase Gokudera."

My mom gladly shakes that hand. "Nana Sawada," she says. They release each other. "I'm glad you and my son have met. It's so hard for him to make friends, you know? He's always been so awkward."

I crane my head toward the ceiling, and drops of sweat threaten to break through my skin.

"I'm the same way," Gokudera says, fakes a chuckle, and waves a hand dismissively.

Mom nods. She glimpses at the bowl in her hands, at me very quickly and at Gokudera. "Well, you're welcome here any time, Hayase-san. Thank you for the gift – I'll go put this on the table. Hopefully my husband won't hog them all!" Mom shuffles out of the room laughing.

Thinking of nothing else I can do, I give Gokudera a halfhearted tour of the house. Her delight increases with each room, even the most boring one. I would say she's just trying to be enthusiastic, polite, but there is something very genuine about her reactions, and somehow it makes the air around us feel warmer.

We stop at my room at the end. I gulp upon opening the door and seeing how messy I've left it. Bed unmade, dirty clothes on the floor, empty plates and cups. Gokudera steps inside and marvels, "Wow, Tenth, your room is amazing!"

I chuckle nervously. "Uh, thanks," I say.

I attempt to clean up some of the more obvious messes without getting in her line of sight too much. Mostly she skims over my collection of manga and various videogames, which I keep in a grid of cubbies at the foot of my bed. She has a look on her face like she has never seen any of the titles there. She even pulls out a few of the books and reads the summaries on their back panels.

Mass of clothes in hand, I stand up straight and regard her for a moment. Her hair falls to the nape of her neck, fraying at the ends. Her shorts are very short today, so I can see the entire tattoo on the back of her thigh – a fancy treble clef.

"You can sit down if you want," I say quietly.

She turns around starting at the shoulders and meets my eyes. "Thanks," she says. She finishes reading the description of one of the books, files it back into place and sits at the very edge of my bed, keeping all her weight still on her feet.

"You must read a lot, Tenth," she starts. She aims her eyes at the floor. I quit what I'm doing and sit beside her, and set a pillow vertically against the headboard so I can lean on it comfortably.

"Not really," I admit. "Mostly just manga and comics. I like shounen."

She glances at the bookshelf. "I can see that. Shounen's cool." She faces forward again, smiling slightly.

"What do you like to read? Do you do it often?" I ask after a beat. I fold my arms behind my head.

She eyes me with a look of surprise, as if she never expected me to ask her questions.

"Yeah," she says. She sets her elbows on her thighs, joins her hands at the fingertips and lets them fall forward beyond her knees. "I read mostly classic novels, though." She chuckles once but the sound falls flat.

I say my all-time favorite mangaka has to be Yoshihiro Togashi, because I love series like _Hunter x Hunter _and _Yu Yu Hakusho_. I can't remember how young I was when I first got into that stuff. I also love action-fantasy RPGs – especially _Devil May Cry_ and _Diablo_. Not able to help indulging, I end up explaining much about the premise and plot of each of these series, and she hangs on my every word.

Her favorite book is _Don Quixote_, I learn. She reads all the time: not just classics, but modern indie novels, memoirs, scientific journals and encyclopedias. She gets caught up in underdog stories easily and adores books that make her think, but she can't stand most detective tales because she usually solves the crime herself long before the book even ends.

And in contrast, she's never played a videogame in her life.

I jump from my bed. "You've seriously never played a videogame before?"

She shakes her head.

I shake my head, too, and start to pace a little. "Man! How do you even live?" I ask. She just apologizes.

My heart's jumping – I can feel it now. I breathe slower and drop my arms to my sides and wonder if the air conditioner has turned itself off. In the silence, she shrugs her shoulders.

At length I lift my arm halfway and point my thumb out the open door. "Wanna go downstairs and play some?" I ask.

"Sure," she says, smiling again. She rises from the bed and I pluck a few of the easier games out of their cubbies.

After half an hour of trying different things, we end up settling on _Mario Party_.

I know that game never goes well, but just about everything else is too far above her skill level. And even so, she's still in fourth place by the last turn. At this point I can't tell whether she really is hopeless at this or is just letting me win.

The game ends and I look out the window, and the sky is a light shade of gray. I set down my controller and come closer to the window. Blotches of wet grow on the road.

"Looks like no one will be out boating today," I mumble.

I turn around. She is pensive, watching the ending animation. She keeps staring at the TV screen after it ends.

There's something sad about the way she looks – maybe it's the dimmed lighting in here, the way her jowls sink when she's in thought or – no, it's her eyes. The depth in them, the reflection of the action on the screen, the hurricanes of emotion brewing around the pupils.

I can feel the gravity around her from all the way over here. I start to step toward her and open my mouth.

"Do your other friends ever play this with you?" she asks, eyes still on the screen, before I can say anything.

I stop in my tracks and suck the corners of my lips into my mouth. I sigh.

"Sometimes," I say. I approach the sofa again, and sit a few feet from her, careful to not upset the pillows too much. "My friends back in my hometown are gamers just like me, but here not so much."

She nods slowly. Her eyes lower from the screen. The controller slips out of her hands and onto the cushion beside her.

"I'm, uh, sorry about yesterday." I just don't like her quiet like this.

Finally she faces me. "What do you mean, Tenth?"

"Well, I kind of just forced you to hang out with all those people, even though it was obvious from the start that they made you uncomfortable. I'm sorry."

She gazes at me a moment, and her expression seems flattered, if not confused. She smiles a little.

"Oh, it's okay, Tenth. You have other friends. I get that." She draws her eyes back to the screen but does not focus on it, and joins her fingertips together and lets her hands balance beyond her knees again. "I had the opportunity to leave. I just wanted to stick with you, you know. Make sure you're safe and all that." Her shoulders shrug.

I blink a few times at her. "That's… really thoughtful of you," I say, trying to smile, "But I don't need protection around them. I trust them – they're good people. You don't have to worry."

For a split-second I think about a time I couldn't have been older than five. I was on the beach, eating a popsicle, when I dropped it in the sand and started to tear up. Then Kyoko, a stranger at the time, walked up and handed hers to me, said I could eat as much as I wanted of it. When we told the parentals we had shared a popsicle, her aunt freaked out about the germs we had spread – "But, honestly," my dad said, "Little kids do gross things like that all the time and turn out okay. How could they think about germs?" Mom got mad.

Gokudera regards me briefly and then scans the room, stopping at different points, like the window and the bookshelf. It's as if she doesn't understand the concept of trusting someone.

Quietly I dig into my shorts pocket and pull out my knife, this time unsheathing it. She notices and turns toward me.

"Besides, I've got this," I explain. I hold it out in front of her but do not point it at her.

Her eyes run up and down the blade. She bites a corner of her mouth. "But you're holding it wrong," she says quietly, almost like she's afraid to correct me.

I draw the knife toward me. "Oh, no, I know," I say. "This is how I really hold it." I demonstrate my usual method. It's the same way I held it to distract Bel and Ras That Night.

"But that's still wrong," she says.

I cock an eyebrow, glance at the knife in my hand, and then look back at her. "I've always handled it like this, though."

"It's like _this_, actually," she says. She rises to her feet, takes a couple steps forward, faces me, extends her right arm just a bit and holds out her hand a certain way. She swipes it back and forth at the wrist. "See, Tenth?"

I squint at her a minute to try to picture it, and at last shake my head. Her arm lowers. Her expression changes as though she is disappointed in herself. I grab the base of the blade between my thumb and index finger and point the handle toward her, and lift my arm. She hesitates before taking it.

"See, the way you were holding it, it was like you're a jealous husband who just caught another man in his bed, and you had him pinned and were gonna stab out his liver or something," she says. Her balance keeps shifting from one foot to another. She makes a fist around the handle and the blade sticks out below it. "That's not very efficient."

She flips the knife around by the handle. "When you're trying to defend yourself – not going into a serious knife fight or anything – first of all, you don't want to squeeze the knife, because that will make you move too stiffly." She clasps the knife handle so tightly that her knuckles turn white, and then loosens her grip. "You hold it like this to slash people." She holds it like she would a running garden hose, her fingers coiled loosely around the handle, her thumb on the bolster.

"You want to keep your arm and wrist loose so that you can move around more easily." She swipes the knife through the air from side to side, slashing an invisible enemy between us. The air makes a soft whistling sound as the blade tears through it. "In order to keep more distance and more mobility, you'll want to keep the handle running diagonally across your palm." She straightens the blade along her inner knuckles and moves it back into the optimum angle.

Then she changes her position. "For your stance, you'll want to keep your feet apart, one in front of the other, and have one shoulder toward the back, away from the other person. That way, you don't have so many weak spots exposed. It's almost like you're standing sideways. And be sure not to over-extend your arm." She starts to shuffle her weight again. "Facing off with somebody, you want to keep moving constantly, and you don't want to make too many grand swipes with your knife, because if you do, you lose energy faster, and it's harder to come back from a move. Tuck in your elbows. Little cuts, little jabs. Go in a circular motion, since you want to _slice_ with the knife, not just hit." She thrusts her elbow forward and back, again and again. "You can stab, too, like this, though it's not ideal."

She spears at the air and then freezes, and slowly turns her head from the blade toward me. At that she smiles and stands normally. "That's just the basics. Does it make sense, Tenth?" she asks.

I stare blankly at her for a minute, trying to digest everything she has told me. _Don't be stiff, keep moving, block myself, slice in circles… _I nod and give her a conscious smile. She carefully returns the knife to me. Her nails are painted black and have tiny red and white rhinestones adhered to them, though a few of the stones have fallen off.

"Thanks," I tell her. I fumble with the knife for a few seconds and try to hold it the way she's taught me.

Her smile brightens. "There you go."

I make some lazy slashing motions and, satisfied, slip the blade into its holster.

"Where did you learn to use knives like that?" I ask, pocketing the weapon.

She shrugs her shoulders. Her feet shuffle a bit. "From some homeless guy in front of a card shop," she says.

I cock my head and furrow my eyebrows, and she immediately raises her arms.

"I did look it up afterward! It is correct…"

"Sounds legit," I lilt, nodding. I start to laugh and she fakes a laugh along with me. I try to recall, to no avail, any time I have even spoken to a homeless person.

Our laughter fazes out, and at a loss for motion Gokudera just sits down beside me, a little closer than before.

"Have you ever had to use your knife before?" I ask.

Her face pales and I wish I could retract words straight out of the air. But she takes a moment to think before she answers, using her tongue and teeth to play with her lip ring.

"A few times," she mumbles, and she thinks a couple seconds more and nods. She meets my eyes, and though she's trying to smile, I can sense the underlying sadness in her face again. I can only imagine. "It's an important thing to know how to do, though, even if you're not on the streets."

I nod vigorously. "Oh, yeah." I take a look up at the ceiling and the fan spins in my peripheral. My hands move from my lap to my sides and press on the cushions.

"I want to live as normal of a life as possible," I admit, slowly bringing my eyes to her. "But, at the same time, I want to be prepared if something happens." My line of sight keeps falling after it reaches her and lands on a plank of wood peeking out from beneath the sofa. Under my breath, I add, "God forbid."

Her eyes flutter closed – her eyeshadow is lavender purple and sparkly today. She focuses on breathing for a moment, chest rising and falling, goosebumps rising on her arms. The rainfall increases in power, a constant sigh from the outside world. At length she opens her eyes and bows her head.

"Something did happen," she says.

My attention snaps to her, while she searches the wood grain, and I swallow hard.

Gokudera lays her head on the back of the couch and sighs. Her head rolls onto its side so that she faces me. The rest of her body goes limp, seems to put all its effort into breathing. She looks so tired and weak. She blinks lazily at me and touches her tongue to the inside of her lip: I can tell from the movement of her piercing.

"I'm glad you were there That Night, Tenth," she says. Her eyes shut but don't reopen. "Thank you. You don't know how you helped me."

I scan her up and down, fretting. I want to ask her what's wrong, if she's okay. But I know what she's likely to say.

"Any decent person would have done what I did," I say dismissively.

It takes a moment, but her eyes roll open. The corners of her lips gradually turn upward. She stares directly into my eyes, and all at once, the life comes back into her. Color rushes into her face. Her limbs visibly strengthen.

"Then, Tenth, you must be the first truly decent person I've met."

Thunder purrs in the distance, and the small trees in the landscape rustle against the siding. I sit still and gaze at her, and she at me, until she chuckles lightly and slides onto her feet off the sofa and grabs her controller. We play another round. This time, she knows what she is doing.

~0o.o0o.o0~

**Tsuna is kinda rude, isn't he? Then again, Hayse isn't exactly the most polite, either. **

**Character names: **

** - Aoi Nagishi/Chrome = Nagi/Chrome Dokuro  
- ****Hayase Gokudera = Hayato Gokudera (I stole this name from Zee, who BTW writes amazing 27fem!59 fanfics. You should check them out sometime. Also, did I mention she is perfect?)  
- ****Mitsuko Sasagawa = Ryohei Sasagawa  
- ****Chinatsu Yamamoto = Takeshi Yamamoto  
- ****(That bratty little girl who runs into Tsuna at the party and makes him spill his drink = Lambo)  
- ****Daniele Rinato = Reborn (he needed an actual name, and since Daniele Rinato is my headcanon real name for him… yeah. FYI: rinato is the Italian word for reborn.)**

**I also had some reference notes with links but FFN is really picky so, if you want to see what was there, you'll have to find this story on Tumblr or somewhere else. **


	4. Chapter 4

Today is a low-key day. I sit hunched on the edge of my bed, a copy of _The Satyricon _in my hands (Gokudera lent it to me, said I should read it), and she's on her back, on the floor, on the 14th volume of _Hunter x Hunter_. We pretend not to hear my parents yelling at each other.

"Are you okay?"

I lower the book onto my lap and see she's watching me upside-down. I hesitate a moment, wondering what prompted her to ask such a question.

"Yeah," I say slowly.

She blinks at me a few times. I notice the fabric of her shirt sink over her chest, thesilver ring over her bottom lip shift. "Alright," she whispers, and she lifts the book over her head to read more. It's barely open. She can't understand people who so recklessly bend spines or mark on pages. To her, books are sacred.

Internally I tell myself to start reading again – I have just reached chapter four –, but my eyes are frozen in her direction. Focus shifts between her and blankness. The air feels warm and heavy in here. The sun doesn't come through the blinds at all. Mom's starting to cry, and Dad's got another lame apology. Our family shouldn't be here – we're so scared. Gokudera's pedicure is cherry red, and the paint's already chipped off one of the toenails. I wonder if Bianchi and Mr. Rinato ever fight like this, but out of decency I don't ask.

"How do you like it so far?" I hear my voice speak, but cannot register that I spoke.

She closes the book, keeping her thumbs between two of the pages so as to not lose her place, and brings it to her abdomen. "Like what, Tenth?"

I shrug my shoulders. I think my nose scrunches. "I don't know," I admit. One of my hands flies away from _Satyricon _and starts to gesticulate. "That book, staying here, life. I don't know." I shrug again.

Her eyebrows furrow. She lifts her head and gropes blindly for the bookmark she brought, in much worse condition than she'd ever allow her books to be, and finally slips it between the pages, sits up, and spins on her tailbone to face me, sticking out her neck. She's still perplexed, I can tell from her eyebrows, but she tries to smile somewhat.

"I'd say it's been alright," she lilts. Her head cocks to the side and her smile widens. Two heavy metal pendants clang together on her necklaces.

I don't feel my hand drop to my side. Aside from the muffled argument downstairs, the house is silent. The air feels sticky between my clothes and my skin, and I realize I am sweating.

I have no idea of the look on my face. But I know it piques some suspicion in her. She squints at me, her smile failing. "Are you sure you're okay, Tenth?"

"Yeah," I mouth, and I start to shake my head rapidly up and down. A cosmic force brings me to a sudden stop, and I find myself staring blankly at the wall straight across the room. I can feel her worrying very hard at me. It solidifies between the dark, sunken rings around her eyes.

Consciously I set the book in my hand onto the sheets, close my eyes, and push myself off the bed. I smooth the front of my shorts without looking.

"Want to go to Sol Hi or something?" I say breathlessly.

Her smile comes back, larger, faker, more reassuring. She maintains balance rising to her feet.

I grab my phone off the nightstand and pocket it, and try to think of a way to leave the house without running into my parents. Gokudera follows me down the stairs. Their voices sound louder down here. They're in their bedroom. Mom is definitely in tears.

This huge, hot lump forms in the base of my throat. I excuse myself for a minute, leave Gokudera alone at the bottom of the stairs, and as casually as I can, slip into the bathroom.

The floor is a dark gray slate that's always cold to the touch. There's a small frosted window just below the ceiling, where natural light prods and prods but cannot fully pass. The shower-tub, rarely used for its low water pressure, sits clean and empty toward the back. I stand in front of the toilet, lift the lid, spread my feet shoulder-width apart, unzip my pants and empty what little is in my bladder, not knowing what else to do. I stare at the line separating the herringbone wallpaper from the ceiling, and collect my thoughts a bit.

Gokudera has shown up at my doorstep every morning at the exact same time, and I have to admit it's the most consistent thing that's ever been in my life. By the end of the first week I found myself checking the clock and feeling anxious the minutes before I knew she would arrive. I don't know what she thinks of me, or why she even wants to see me day after day. But I think I'm slowly getting used to this strange girl.

When I finish, I wash my hands and leave the room, and I feel oddly tired.

She's sitting on the second to bottom stair, doing something, I don't know what, on her small cell phone. She stands and pockets her phone upon noticing me.

The two of us slip out of the house quietly. I send a text message to both of my parents, explaining that I'm going out and where.

A guy with multicolored hair ducks into a headwind as he rides his bike down an angled road. Gokudera and I stop to watch him, without him noticing, until he zips around a corner and we don't see him anymore, and we start walking again.

It's mid-afternoon, so the diner has hit a lull in activity. Fans have been placed all over the dining area, humming, turning back and forth; they make little impact. We slide into a corner booth. A heavy-set older woman comes to us right away – her name is Yuuki, according to her nametag. I order lemonade and a sandwich I've had before, even though I'm not hungry, and Gokudera orders coffee, black, no cream or sugar, and asks if she can smoke here. Yuuki says yes and shuffles away.

Gokudera tries to hide the frantic way she grabs her lighter and cigarette pack. I scan the room as if something in it has changed, investigate the plastic cover over our seats, try to find the seams between one concrete floor panel and another. The smell of smoke barrages me. Eyes watering just a tad, I bring my focus Gokudera across the table from me. Her eyes are trained on something outside. I lean forward to get a better angle out the window. Two crows in the gravel parking lot bicker over discarded French fries. She sucks on her cigarette greedily.

I realize she knows almost everything about me. We've known each other not even the whole summer, and she knows almost everything about me.

Not that there is much to me in the first place. I am not some deeply complex person. I'm an only child with two (mostly) happily married parents. I don't have many hobbies, my grades suck and no sports team in the right mind would want me, but somehow I manage. Other than "vacations", I've lived in the same town, the same house since I was born, having never ventured outside Japan. And, honestly? I like things this way. Simple, transparent, average – boring. Perfect. There is nothing I can reveal that I have not, one way or another.

Hayase Gokudera is Italian – specifically Tuscan, smokes, lives next door, has a total of ten piercings and at least one tattoo, swears a lot, knows how to fight, likes to read, listens to some very weird music, doesn't step on sidewalk cracks, and apparently takes her coffee as bitter as it can possibly be. I'm not entirely satisfied with just that, but I can accept it.

Her cigarette is already half gone. She uses a porcelain appetizer plate as an ashtray. One of the crows hops away, stops, and flutters back to the other, who bullies him away from the mashed fries.

"It's so hot," Gokudera remarks, her foundation melted and blotchy.

I glimpse at her before returning to the birds. "Yeah."

She also wears heavy makeup. She wears more makeup than any other girl I've seen.

Yuuki comes with our orders, silently laying them on the table. Gokudera coughs out a thank you. She balances her cigarette across the rim of the plate, exhales all the smoke in her mouth, and dips her head backward drinking the coffee. Steam is still pouring out of the mug when she sets it back down.

I glance at the pulp at the bottom of my glass of lemonade and the stark white Styrofoam look of my sandwich bread, and lean an elbow on the table.

"If it's so hot, then why did you order coffee?" I ask.

At first she looks at me and opens her mouth wide to answer, but she freezes. She glares into space for a minute. Her lips close and open again. Her shoulders tense like she's going to shrug, but she never completes the movement. Finally she turns toward me. "I was in the mood for it," she replies. Her eyes avert from me, to the crows with the fries in the parking lot.

I furrow my eyebrows. "Weirdo," I say under my breath, and I smile a little smile.

Red in the cheeks now, she sips a bit of her coffee and then drags on her cigarette until the white part is totally gone. She crushes the butt of it with the underside of her mug. The leftover smoke leaves it quickly. I eat less than half of my sandwich but ask for a refill on my drink with the check.

Yuuki is smiling when she brings another glass, a slip of paper and a slice of actually good-looking Neapolitan layer cake. If the Sol Hi Diner is good for anything, it's the desserts. Gokudera frowns in surprise at the cake.

I thank Yuuki and she nods, bids us a good day and walks away. I watch her retreat into the kitchen – and right beside the flimsy gray door, my eyes stop on a small hanging sign. Free Desserts For Couples Weekday Lunches Only. I open my mouth to tell Yuuki she got the order wrong, but she's already gone. I look back at Gokudera and gulp.

"You can have it," I mumble.

Gokudera's eyes snap up to mine and the intensity in her features vanishes. I don't know what expression I have on my face, but she sits up and nudges the tiny plate toward me with her long, skinny fingers. "Oh, no, Tenth. You can have it. It's yours." The forced brightness in her voice makes my throat feel tight.

I study the cake a moment – the molten frosting, the glistening texture, the bright colors, the smell – I think there's a smell to it –, the two plastic forks lying on the edge of the plate. All the sudden I'm hungry.

"Are you sure?" I whimper.

"Of course," she says, this time grinning. "You deserve it. Besides, I don't care for sweets." She waves a hand in the air as if to dispel tiny, floating physical manifestations of doubt.

I return the smile. "Thank you." I grab a fork and dig into the cake, and am not disappointed. Gokudera leans back, alternating between watching me and the now three birds in the parking lot. I hope she has not noticed the free desserts sign. For some reason I think she has anyway.

While I'm eating she wordlessly pays the check in full with a wad of small bills from her back pocket, and the moment I finish she scoots over like she wants to stand. I take the hint and we leave. The weather seems even hotter than it was when we entered the diner. We cut through a bit of woods to reach my house as quickly as possible.

Mom is sitting at the breakfast table, alone, head in her folded arms, when we get there. Gokudera freezes in place as soon as she sees her and stands fretting in the doorway. I regard my mother for a few seconds, then check the rest of the house for Dad. He's not around. The speedboat is gone.

"Do you need help with anything, Maman?" Gokudera asks. She's just beside my mother, leaning low to speak to her.

Mom hesitates a few seconds – shifts, hides a sniffle. Her head lifts and the rims of her eyes are pink and swollen.

"Thank you, Hayase-san." She angles her gaze toward the ceiling in thought, squeezing her eyelids shut to rid of the stinging feeling. She sniffles again.

"If you wouldn't mind," she says, facing Gokudera, "Would you water the indoor plants for me?"

Gokudera rises. "Not a problem," she announces. Mom smiles and tells her the watering can is in the cupboard under the sink, and lays her head back down.

I pull out the chair at my mother's side and seat myself. I hear Gokudera fill the container with tap water and exit the room. She returns a few minutes later, dumps the little remaining water into the basin, and puts away the can.

"Done." She approaches the table, but stops a couple yards away.

Mom raises her head again. "Thank you." She starts to preen her fluffy brown hair, inhaling harshly so that maybe her nose will stop running. "You're so helpful, Hayase-san," she says. Then she looks pointedly at me. Watering plants is supposed to be one of my chores. I scowl.

She requests a few other things from Gokudera, who fulfills all tasks eagerly. I whip my phone out of my pocket and switch back and forth between three different games. I feel bad for not helping my mom, but if I get up and start doing things, Gokudera will take over and insist that I rest, like she always does – I feel there's nothing I can do.

The guilt stops at the edge of dusk, when Mom finally says she can't think of anything else for Gokudera to do. We order pizza. While eating Mom asks if this really is a common food in Italy, and Gokudera says no, and Mom laughs.

It's not stated, but Dad is currently a forbidden topic. The three of us have just started a movie in the living room by the time he comes back.

Mom hits pause on the remote and stares straight at him. He stands sweaty and windblown halfway across the room, staring back. Without a word, I retreat to my bedroom upstairs, and Gokudera follows.

The door closes. We turn on only the table lamp. I sit on the edge of my bed. The air in here is moist and warm and heavy, so unbelievably heavy.

In the stiff quietude, Gokudera holds herself by the elbows, shifting her weight from her right leg to her left.

"You seem tired, Tenth," she says.

I slowly turn my head toward her and nod. My neck feels sore. I'm sick of sweating so much. I focus through the dim light on the tessellation pattern on her tank top, the geometric black birds that cut away the white fish.

She pads toward me. The worry in her eyes is tangible again. My head is down now and my fingers file into my hair and hold it down, but I can feel that worry on me, and it makes my dinner churn inside my stomach.

"You know," she says more softly, "At my grandmother's old house, my cousins used to try to scare me – they'd talk about this ghost in an abandoned room on the third floor." She takes a barely noticeable pause. "I liked to say I didn't believe them, but sometimes I made my nanny sit beside my bed while I fell asleep."

I chuckle once, not knowing how else to respond. The air conditioner sputters. Then, it starts: the yelling. I'm suddenly hit with a desire to not touch anything at all – not my bed, not my clothes, not my skin, not the air, not anything. I can barely breathe. I do _not _want to be here.

I grit my teeth until my head hurts, heave a sigh and lift my head toward some distant point beyond the ceiling. I blink and my eyes go to Gokudera – the tessellation, her face.

"I hate that he puts us through this," I say weakly. My eyes close and for a second I am weightless. Her shadowed figure is the first thing I see when I open them again. I hear her whisper an apology.

Something ruptures inside me, releasing a boiling surge of anger. The muscles tighten all over my body to keep it under control.

My head shakes. "I'm sorry. My problems are dumb." I have to look away from her. I'm trembling.

"Don't be sorry, Tenth." She moves toward the bed, and sits so lightly on it next to me that I don't feel a thing.

"You can tell me about them," she says. My attention snaps to her and she quickly adds, "—That is, if you want."

The table lamp behind her gives her a silver halo of sorts. She wrings her hands in her lap, but the rest of her is still.

I blink at her a few times, exhale the tension from my body. Maybe this is why she smokes, I ponder: so she can visibly breathe out the anger inside her. Someone like her must be angry a lot. Someone like me has nothing to be angry about.

"My dad…" I start, and I don't know why but I think I can keep going without having to push. I sigh again and again. She watches me, patient.

"My dad – he means well." I roll backward a bit. It's easier to talk if I keep my eyes on the ceiling. "He got my mom pregnant with me right after high school. He said he would take care of everything. A wedding, a house, a car, a baby. Even my mom's parents gave us this place for free, so we could have somewhere to visit for fun. Things were supposed to turn out okay."

Downstairs, the shouts intensify. A shudder creeps from my neck to my legs. I click my tongue, and when I start talking again I realize my voice is trembling.

"I was too little to understand at the time, but it eventually came out that my dad didn't have enough money for any of these things. He had borrowed it all from a shady loan shark. This lake house is the only thing my family actually owns. He wanted to give us a good life, and he tries really hard, but…" My eyes shut. I loosen and shake out my arms, but the pent-up rage pops right back up as soon as I stop. "Usually, when the mobsters come calling, my dad doesn't have the money. So we run and hide out here until they either quit or are paid back. Sometimes they get violent."

I gasp. My eyes fly open and head drops. I settle, solidify, deflate. The air around me has not stirred at all. The yelling has not stopped. My heart is pounding.

I search wildly for a moment through the dark void filling the room. Her gravity comes out of nowhere and pulls me into substance.

She still has that silver halo. She's quiet, pensive. Her bottom lip has disappeared inside her mouth. She stares half at me, half at nothing for a moment.

"You have nowhere else to go," she breathes. Her eyes go wide a little and meet mine directly.

She releases her lip – the metal ring flicks against her teeth noiselessly. She intakes a breath and opens her mouth. Just then her phone starts to ring. Her expression changes instantly, to something of deep shame, apology, a hint of irritation. I nod once. She leans far toward one side to dig her cell phone out of her back pocket. She answers without even peeking at the screen.

"Ciao," she says, her voice breaking.

I hear a woman on the other end, muffled and inflective, and concentrate on that over the voices from the first floor. Gokudera chews her lip some more between replies. She starts to spout this language that sounds like song.

From the way she and the other woman start to talk immediately after one another, and the desperation that forms in her expression, I suppose the two of them are at odds. But Italian still seems beautiful. I have never heard her converse in it before. I wait, listening to the words without knowing their meaning, my heartbeat steadying.

At last she hangs up. "That was my sister," she says mournfully, closing her eyes. She opens them and turns toward me. "She wants me home now."

A hot, rigid sensation worms its way up and down my throat and chest. "Oh."

Gokudera frowns – not quite in her usual way, but out of disappointment. She rises from the bed. The movement makes no noise or waves. My parents are screaming now. She grabs her phone and holds it.

"It's okay," I stammer. "Um. Thanks for listening, I guess."

She stands directly in front of me, her hands folded in front of her, her cell phone resting in them.

"Of course, Tenth. Any time." She smiles her just-eyes-and-nose smile. "Thank you for sharing with me." The smile disappears, and her voice lowers. "I'm sorry you are in the situation you are in."

I suck on the inside of my cheek. She pauses for me to say something, but I do not. Eventually she waves and turns around and starts for the door, toward the yelling. I know I should get up, walk her out. I cannot. For some reason I think she understands anyway.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Tenth," she says. She's turned for a few seconds, looking straight into my face.

I don't realize she's gone until minutes later, when the door is closed and there is no halo separating me from the table lamp. I pull the chain to turn off the light, take a deep breath, let it leak out, and fall backward through the heavy air onto the bed. I imagine that the words coming from downstairs are of another language.

0o.o0o.o0

Dad barged into my room at an ungodly early hour, fishing rod in hand. I had basically no choice. I dressed in simple clothes and ate a quick something, and then we took off in the speedboat. We floated in circles around one end of the lake for hours. Just as I expected, we got no bites, and by noon, I lost my ability to fake a good time.

"I see," Gokudera says. She thinks a minute. "Do you and your dad always go fishing like that?"

"Not really, not anymore," I reply. I roll my eyes.

Gokudera was waiting at my house with my mother when I returned from the fishing trip. I'm still feeling jumpy from last night. I told her I wanted to go out and do something, and she's come with me even though neither of us knows what. This afternoon is sweltering. The air dances above the white sidewalk in front of us.

"Did your dad ever take you fishing?" I ask. I study the vibrant blue color of the sky.

"No. Never." She puffs on her cigarette once. "He used to take me down to the casino, though, when I was little." The rest of the smoke blows out of her mouth in a stream. "He'd sit at the poker table and put me in his lap." She takes a long drag on the cigarette, holds the smoke in, exhales it. "He called me his good luck charm."

She looks at me and smiles. I can't tell what kind of smile it is. I grin and feign a laugh.

Yesterday's temperature was a record-breaking high for the area, according to Gokudera, who actually got to watch the news this morning. I say I'm not surprised. What does surprise me is that she, knowing my family's predicament, still wants to be associated with me. In the quiet I rack my brain for a why, but there is no answer within the confines of my mind.


	5. Chapter 5

The other kids have decided to throw an early birthday party for Mitsuko at the combined Yamamoto-Miura household, stuffed to the rafters with food, music, novelty swimsuits and a blatant lack of adults.

I'm on my way to that house now. The sky is a dingy gray color, caught between dusk and night, and I can already see the twinkling lights and hear the blaring music from a block and a half away. My cell phone and pocketknife weigh down my shorts as I walk.

Behind me, Gokudera calls. "Tenth!"

I stop and turn on my heels, and she canters toward me. She wears a skin-tight black tank top and a knee-length skirt collaged with pictures of flower fields, sunsets over the ocean and European city-streets. Her shoes are the red version of those she wore That Night. All her jewelry must collectively weigh half as much as she does, by the looks of it.

"Hey," I say. She returns the greeting, averts her eyes to some unreachable distance, and tucks a strand of bangs behind her ear. We start toward the house again, side by side.

I take a few glances at her, unsure she notices. Her eyes are even more sunken and darker than usual. I ask if she's tired, and she says she's just fine, but deep in my gut I don't believe her.

Some couple, I'm not too sure, is stationed between the party house and the one next door, making soft kissing and moaning noises. Gokudera and I exchange _"really?"_ glances with each other as we pass them. Then we try to stifle our chuckling.

Chinatsu Yamamoto answers the door. She lurches forth and hugs both of us grandly. Gokudera does not return it, but doesn't complain upon reception, either. I think she's getting used to her. "Come in, come in," the taller one says, sweeping a hand from front to back.

Immediately there is a huge crowd of people. Type-twos as far as the eye can see. I can tell from their demeanors. Most of them I either do not recognize or have not spoken with much. Chinatsu tells us to make ourselves at home and, small-talking, sticks with us until each of us has a plastic cup in hand.

Things are a bit quieter at the back corner of the house, where the room shape shields us from the music, where we find some familiar faces.

"So," I lilt, after all the formalities have taken place, "You must be Chrome's infamous boyfriend."

He and I are facing each other and I've lifted my cup toward him. He's smiling. His arms are folded over the back of Chrome's wheelchair and his chin rests on them. I've never seen the guy before, but he is handsome, and Chrome keeps stealing glances and blushing at him.

"I'm Tsuna Sawada," I say.

"Charmed," he purrs. "Mukuro Rokudo." Chrome grins. Rokudo lifts his head slightly and then lowers it. "Those two dorks over there are my brothers. The blond one's Ken. The one in the stupid hat is Chikusa."

I pivot in place and skim the thin surrounding crowd before I spot them. I can tell from here that the three brothers look nothing alike. Maybe they're adopted, I figure, or are just close friends who call themselves siblings.

Kyoko wears a pink dress with white polka dots, lovely as always. There's an older guy – Mochida, I think his name is, chatting with her like he's impressive. I look away for one second to watch her and already Chrome has stolen Rokudo back from me. With no one else, I step away and do what I do best at parties: withdraw, observe, and consider leaving early.

This doesn't last long. Gokudera comes into the room. She spots me right off and her face alights, and she shuffles her feet as she approaches me.

"Tenth," she says, "I think I saw an alien."

My mouth falls open. "What?"

"Yeah!" She nods vehemently. Her voice is hushed, strained. "It's in the kitchen right now. I tried to speak to it." Her head goes still and angles toward the ceiling. "It looked up at the sky like this—" her head lowers "—like it was trying to get a signal, and its Japanese was nearly perfect, except it had a very strange accent."

She shifts and throws a glance over her shoulder, into the kitchen. I don't see anyone remotely extraterrestrial-looking. Then she faces me. "I want to study it some more," she concludes.

I've never seen her so excited over something unrelated to me before. It's obvious she's having a better time at this party than she expected, and a much better time than I'm having.

"That's great," I say halfheartedly.

Her shoulders lift as if all the energy in her body collects and expands, and she turns to leave, but I jerk forward.

"Uh—!"

She stops and meets my eyes. I stare blankly at her for a few seconds, frozen, unsure of how to say what I want without sounding as utterly selfish as I am.

At length she turns fully toward me, concern settling into her features. "Are you okay, Tenth?" she asks.

I gulp, sigh quietly, and relax my shoulders. "A little scared, actually," I blurt.

"Oh." For a fraction of a second I can feel the air around her sinking. Then she plasters a huge grin onto her face.

"No worries, Tenth!" she proclaims. "I'll protect you!"

I do my best to return the smile. "Thank you," I mumble, and my line of sight drops to my feet. I feel my heart sputter and deflate.

"But, um, would you mind if we stepped outside for a few minutes?" I raise my eyes to the pleading expression on her face. "I kinda need a smoke break. Startin' to get the jitters." She holds out a quivering open hand.

"No problem," I say. I can't get my voice level to come back up.

0o.o0o.o0

Not even a minute after Gokudera and I reenter the house, Ken starts talking across the room about how "Mukuro is an amateur magician." At first Rokudo tries to deny it, but without anybody realizing when or how or why, soon we're gathered like an audience, and he stands alone in a corner, facing us.

"Okay, okay," he says to quell the crowd. "Every magician needs a beautiful assistant. Do I have any volunteers from the audience?"

Ken immediately raises his hand.

"Not you, smartass," Rokudo huffs. Ken drops his hand, and we all laugh, and Rokudo laughs.

A peep comes from the edge of the crowd, an "I'll do it" from Kyoko. She steps forward and everyone applauds.

I watch her prepare for the trick and cannot stop myself from smiling. Kyoko has reddish blond hair and caramel-colored eyes, and soft curves, and the sweetest smile I have ever seen. Gokudera, standing close by my side, shifts her weight and crosses her arms over her chest. The stench of tobacco still clings to her.

Chikusa sneaks up to Rokudo and hands him a pack of cards. Rokudo takes and empties it.

"Alright," he says, holding the stack in an open palm in front of his assistant. "This is a completely ordinary deck of cards. I want you to take one."

Kyoko blinks at the deck and pulls out the card third from the top. He tells her to show it to the people, and she does. Three of hearts, we all note. He cuts the deck and she lays her chosen card on top of one half. On his instruction, she combines the two parts of the deck, and then cuts again.

Gokudera leans sideways, closer to me. "I know what he's doing," she whispers.

I turn my head, but not completely, so that I can keep an eye on the act.

"It's a pretty easy trick," she explains. "I know it. There's a bit of psychology behind it, but as long as she picks a card near the top of the deck at the beginning, and puts it on the correct half after the first cut, it'll go perfectly."

In front of the growing audience, Kyoko continues to break the deck. We're about in the middle of the crowd. The music is still playing, though no one else in the room is speaking.

"I thought he said that was an ordinary deck of cards," I say.

"It is. But that doesn't mean the order wasn't rigged beforehand."

Her balance resituates to the center. Her feet are spread shoulder-width and her arms are still crossed, and the weakly spinning ceiling fan plays with her hair a bit. I steal a glance at her profile. Then I face the magician and his lovely assistant and squint at them, trying to figure out just where the deck has been manipulated. I can't see a thing from back here.

Finally he tells Kyoko to stop. He tilts his palm so that the audience can see the top card. "Now," he says, "Take this number of cards off the top of the deck, and you will find your original card."

She raises her eyebrows, the doubt clear on her face. "Okay," she mumbles. Everyone leans forward as she picks off one card at a time.

And there's the three of hearts. She grins and gawks at him, at us. The audience starts to applaud and I mindlessly join them.

"Card tricks will impress anyone," Gokudera mutters. I look at her again, and she meets my eyes.

"If he's really serious, maybe he'll shuffle the deck," she says. She sounds sarcastic.

"I dunno'," I say with half a shrug, "I think this is pretty cool."

From the back of the room, Mochida calls, "Saw her in half!" Most people laugh, including Rokudo and Kyoko – though both of their laughs sound forced. Kyoko's smile fails around the edges. Mochida is one of those kids from the Evil Twins' side of the neighborhood: all ego, no tact. Gokudera scoffs, and my lips pull back at the corners in agreement with her.

"I don't have any saws," Rokudo says, "But I can do something else." He holds up an index finger in Kyoko's direction, and then turns around and uses the table behind him as a surface for shuffling.

Gokudera shifts her weight back and forth. "Oh, here we go."

Rokudo faces his assistant and fans out the entire deck in front of her. "Pick any card," he says. She strokes her chin, studies the backs of the cards, makes a move to grab one and then stops herself. He encourages her, "Go on, pick one." She shrugs and pinches the end of one card, and looks to the audience, and people nod and approve aloud for her. Scowling in concentration, she pulls out her chosen card and reads it.

"Show everyone else, but not me," Rokudo says. She turns her hand at the wrist to display the card's face to the crowd. It's the five of diamonds.

I steal a glance at Gokudera beside me. Her nose is scrunched and lips are taut. She's speculating him, trying to predict what he's going to do.

Rokudo joins together all the cards in his hands. "Add that to the bottom of the deck." Kyoko slips it underneath. He nods, eyes the audience, and begins to overhand shuffle.

Gokudera hums once – I look at her again. "What?" I whisper.

"Did you see that, Tenth? He just took a step backward," she says. "This is going to be some kinda sleight-of-hand trick."

Rokudo's hands stop moving, and he bends his knees. "Alright, people. The deck's shuffled. Let's see if I can find her card." Everyone is watching. Gokudera taps the toe of her shoe on the floor. Outside, the Yamamotos' akita and the Miuras' papillon strike up a nasty conversation with each other or a party guest or maybe some passing boat.

He holds the deck vertically and waves his opposite hand in the air, for effect, and then teases his index finger just above the deck. A single card rises over the tops of the others. Once the suit and number in the top corner are readable, the crowd goes wild. Kyoko gasps and slaps her hands over her mouth.

I start to clap along with the audience again – and peer at Gokudera. Her bottom lip has vanished.

"What's the trick behind that one?" I ask.

She releases her lip with a soft pop. The silver ring in the center stands out against her dark red lipstick. "He shuffled only the middle of the deck. All he had to do was push up the bottom card with his pinky."

My eyebrows furrow a little as I replay the last performance in my mind. I cannot picture it, but somehow the explanation still makes sense to me. I nod, and we meet eyes and she nods too.

Rokudo does a small flourish with his hand and takes a bow. I continue clapping, and all around the room the applause intensifies.

"I know a few more," he says when things get quieter, "But I'm becoming somewhat of a distraction, it seems. I might do more later." He gestures at Kyoko. "Anyhow, I'd like to thank this _brave_ volunteer. Wasn't she lovely?"

Kyoko grins with her teeth, and faces the crowd as if she's not sure she deserves the praise. One person, probably Mitsuko, whistles. "At least he never sawed me," Kyoko says – with a pointed look at Mochida. Everyone laughs. I lean forward slightly to get a visual on the guy, but the people around me are too tall.

"I'd also like to thank my guinea pigs: Chrome and my brothers." He points in their direction. Even in this dim light I can tell Chrome's face is bright red. He has never been comfortable as the center of attention. Ken grins from ear to ear, while Chikusa seems totally indifferent to the attention.

"Well, that was still really cool," I say. I bring my eyes to Gokudera as the crowd thins.

She has that far-off, sad look about her, and it catches me off guard. My hands fall to my sides and I watch at her until she responds – "Yeah," she breathes. She stares at a spot on the wall, lost in thought. The world starts to move slower and slower.

Then, all at once, I hear a disturbance in the adjacent room, she turns around, and everything snaps back into focus. Before I even catch on, I sense movement beside me. She's walking frantically away.

I hop a step toward her. "Where are you—?"

She throws a glance at me over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Tenth," she says. "I have to go."

Gokudera disappears into the next room.

0o.o0o.o0

It's the Twins.

I spun in place, so unable to decide which direction to take that I couldn't take any. The party din ceased in an entire area of the house. The music played on, but it felt like nothing. My legs carried me through the doorway into the sunroom. And amongst all the others stood, and now stand, the Twins.

"What are you doing here?" Haru asks. A deep, intentional frown crosses her face, and her muscles are stiff. She holds a plastic cup close to her chest.

Bel raises his good arm to the side and grins. "What, did you really think you could throw a party in Namimori and not invite the princes?"

"_And_ not expect us to find out?" Ras adds. He also grins.

The air chills around me, hits me like a tidal wave. Shaking, I sneak toward a more densely peopled corner of the room, my eyes trained on the two blond boys. My shoulders ache. I make my hands into fists. Sweat erupts from my neck.

The dogs outside run around howling. The rest of the house seems to realize that something is not right, and quiets.

Bel chuckles. "Oh, come now," he says, "We're all just here for a good time." He takes a step forward and everyone in the room visibly tenses.

"Go away," a boy barks.

"I'm hurt," Bel whines, slapping a palm over the center of his chest.

Without thinking I cup my hand around the pocket of my shorts. The blade inside feels stinging hot through the leather and cloth.

Mitsuko Sasagawa marches into the room, followed by a small entourage. Her huge, tanned arms are crossed. "What's going on in here?" she demands. Her gaze pierces straight through the two identical intruders.

The Twins meet her with silence, but they do not seem intimidated. At length, Ras sighs.

"Eh, this is probably boring anyway," he says. He turns from Mitsuko to his brother. His head jerks in a way that moves his bangs away from his eyes, though I still cannot make them out. Bel faces him. "Let's just go."

"But, brother, we cannot take an affront to our pride like this," Bel insists.

He looks at Mitsuko and extends his good arm toward her. "We would like to stay," he says.

"Get out." Her voice is gravelly. The veins in her forehead and arms are popping. She leans forward, leering at them. "Get out before I kick you out."

Bel's smile deflates instantly. "Rude," he says under his breath.

I stroke my fingertips over the pocket lining. My skin burns.

As Bel speaks, Ras scans the room. I cannot see his eyes behind his thick blond bangs but his head swings in my direction and stops, and I feel him glaring at me. I shift my balance ever so slightly to hide behind another person. But I keep my attention on him, touching my knife handle and sending him just-you-try signals. I recall Gokudera's instructions. Loosen up, hold the blade diagonally, keep a shoulder back, move constantly, cut in circular motions.

Bel saunters to Mitsuko – everyone else holds their breath – and lays a hand on her shoulder. "Now, now, we aren't that much of a bother, are we?"

Mitsuko's head lunges at him and he jumps back and stands feet from her, Cheshire grinning. He lifts his free hand and gestures for her to charge him, but Ras grabs him by the waist and says, "We can find something more_ entertaining_ somewhere else," before she even moves. He pulls him backward but doesn't make much headway.

Bel pouts and eyes his brother sideways. "Fair enough." Ras hesitates before letting him go.

The boys turn on their heels and walk out the back door.

"Understand that we are not simply retreating," Bel taunts over his shoulder. Mitsuko crouches and frowns at them and raises her fists. Ras grabs Bel's upper arm, and they quicken their pace.

The two of them disappear outside and I can feel every person in the room let go of the breaths they are holding. I realize my fingers are stiff with readiness, and I take my hand out of my pocket and clench and unclench the joints until they are relieved. The knife no longer burns for me.

Mitsuko cups her hands in the air, almost screaming. "I should've pounced on them while I had the chance!" she laments. Kyoko, at her side, pats her on the shoulder. "I know, Big Sis. You'll get to do it someday." Mitsuko groans loudly and hits the ball of her hand on her forehead.

Haru faces the general crowd. "Everything's clear," she announces. The activity trickles into motion until it resumes to the rushing flood it originally was.

And lo and behold, I find myself alone again within a sea of souls. The inevitable conclusion of every social event in which I take part. I stand near a doorway, just outside a circle of friends I barely know, nursing a soda that's become lukewarm and watery, unable to tell the differences between the faces around me. I start to think about the universe and other existential things, to fight off the cold disappointment looming shadowlike behind me. It hits me anyway.

Deflating, I glance about the room in hope that a bratty little girl with big hair will come barreling in my direction and ruin my clothes so that I have an excuse to leave. I'd rather be lonely at home than here. I remember That Night – wonder where the Twins ran off, wish Gokudera was with me.

Maybe I can sneak out without anyone noticing. The party is chaotic enough. I can do it.

I duck out of the living room and make my way through the house, skirting close to the walls. No one stops me, even though, in the back of my mind, I hope somebody does.

The couple in the alley is gone or silent. I grab the waist of my shorts and hitch them up, the contents of my pockets hitting my leg. I feel a rift of air separate me from the Yamamoto-Miura house.

Not thinking, I grab my cell phone from my pocket and tap around on the touchscreen, and end up texting my parents that I'm coming home while meandering inattentive down the sidewalk.

"Tsuna-kun." I jolt to a stop. Chills prick at the back of my neck and settle in my chest and become warm. I turn around.

"Hi, Chrome," I say, trying to smile. I immediately notice the other boys behind him. "Hi, Rokudo, Ken, Chikusa." They're just a few houses away from me.

Rokudo stops pushing the wheelchair and looks over his shoulder at his brothers, and Ken rubs the back of his neck. "I told you, you don't have to follow us;" he tells them, "I'll meet you guys back at the house." "Are you sure, Mukuro-san?" "Positive." Ken and Chikusa take one last hesitative glance at him before shrinking away in the opposite direction. Rokudo faces me, shakes his head, and starts to wheel Chrome toward me again.

"Hi," I repeat.

Chrome, beside me now, smiles up at me. "You heading home early?" he asks.

My eyebrows collect in the center and I shrug. "Yeah," I sigh.

"Me too," Chrome says. "I'm not a big fan of parties."

I nod a bit. "Same."

I make a move to slip the phone in my hand into my pocket, but right then it vibrates and dings quietly. A message from Gokudera: _How are you, Tenth? Is everything going well so far? _

The three of us circle around a car jutting out of a driveway. I frown at the screen and type a reply. _Yea Im fine bt I could ask you the same .why did u leave? _

I press the button at the top of the phone to click the screen off, and squeeze the phone in my palm, my knuckles growing hot. The air tonight is so humid, one could swim in it.

"So, uh." Both Rokudo and Chrome eye me. I take a massive breath. "How did you two meet?" I continue, stammering.

"We shared a hospital room," Chrome answers. He leans backward in his chair and lifts his arms to touch the fingers Rokudo has wrapped around the handles.

Rokudo chuckles. "Yes. I had just had surgery on my right eye." He lifts a hand and points at the soft skin underneath the eye. "Got a fishing hook caught in it, of all things."

I suck air through my teeth and flex my neck. "That's gotta hurt," I say.

"But at least I could recover," he says. He grabs onto the handle again. "Poor Chrome had to have his right eye entirely removed because it was so damaged."

He tried to save a stray cat, I learned earlier, and the car hit him instead. Once he came to he insisted his family adopt that cat. Now they have five, one for each kid.

"It was worth it," Chrome says. He smiles like he means this in more ways than one.

_I am so, so sorry_, Gokudera texts me. _I will make it up to you later. _I unlock my phone but do not reply yet.

"How long have you been together?" I ask.

"Going on ten months," Rokudo says. He brings his gaze from me to the vague distance ahead.

"We've helped each other grow a lot," Chrome adds. "I know it's strange, but it wasn't until I got into this – my first serious relationship – that I realized how well I could handle my own self."

I nod thoughtfully. I lift my phone closer to my face and start to type in the most polite way possible.

_It was the twins, wasn't it? _Send.

"Good for you guys," I say. I turn and glance at both of them. Chrome is blushing. Rokudo is unchangeably handsome.

We traverse another block or so without speaking. The air feels thicker and steamier with each step. The cicadas on the other side of the road are nearly deafening. A car with a canoe strapped to its roof rolls past us, and a man at the end of the street returns home from a late-night jog.

I unlock my phone again and check for new messages, but don't find any other than a "be safe" confirmation from my mother.

"You and Gokudera-san seem really close," Chrome remarks, out of nowhere. My attention snaps toward him.

Something in the center of my chest turns solid. I start to sweat even more.

"You think so?" I stutter.

"Oh, was she the gray-haired girl you were talking to during the party?" Rokudo asks.

Chrome cranes his neck upward to address his boyfriend, and Rokudo leans forward and down to accommodate. "Tsuna-kun lives between Gokudera-san and me," he explains in a whisper. Rokudo nods and stands upright.

I look up, too, at the starless sky. My hands slip into my pockets.

"Yes, we've become good friends," I say – more loudly than I wanted.

Chrome watches me a moment. I try to not notice, but something about the knowing sort of expression on his face makes this silence almost unbearable.

"Well, that's really good," he finally says, and he faces forward and rests his hands in his lap.

He thinks for a bit – I can see from the little rises and falls of his eyelashes, the brainless search eyes perform during intense deliberation. I glance at the street sign on the corner. I can't read the words from here, in this darkness, but I still feel close to my home.

"Ever since the two of you started hanging out, she's been more…" He trails off, rolling his eye upward. "…How do I put it? Comfortable? She's come out of her shell, I think."

My mind flashes to the way she glared at me That Night, the overwhelming signal of get-away. The terror in her eyes when she realized I was still there. Her sitting in her front doorway, holding her head. The full-face grin she had just last week while we discussed the books we had exchanged.

Then he looks at me. "And you seem less lonely, Tsuna-kun."

Suddenly all the air in my lungs just vanishes. My hands fish around in my pockets, one for my phone, the other for my knife, and squeeze.

"I suppose you're right," I mumble.

After only minutes of more walking, we reach our cul-de-sac. Almost all the windows of the Nagishi house are lit. I bid both of the guys goodnight and make the extra yards to my front stairs. The set of house keys is buried at the bottom of one of my pockets – I need a moment to find them. Rokudo has brought Chrome up the ramp to the porch. I hear them talking in incoherent murmurs from here, and a glimpse in their direction turns into a stare.

At length Chrome brings his chair to the very threshold of the front door and jams a key into the deadbolt. He looks up and Rokudo leans down and they share a kiss. Rokudo saunters down the staircase, hands in his pockets, checking over his shoulder to make sure Chrome enters the house safely.

He reaches the bottom of the staircase, but notices me gazing at him. He grins.

"Goodnight, Tsunayoshi-kun," he calls. His voice is deep and smooth.

"Uh, goodnight," I reply. He waves a hand, turns on his heels and disappears in the direction we've come. I can breathe more deeply now, somehow.

I face my door, pull out my keychain and squint at it as I flip from one key to another. I have to undo all eight locks to get into my house. I can't tell whether anyone is even there until the door opens.

0o.o0o.o0

My cell phone lights up and dances and buzzes on my nightstand. It startles me – my head shoots from my pillow, and I'm hit with cold consciousness. I hold my breath and peek at the screen. And I scramble to answer.

"Gokudera!"

"Tenth, I am so deeply sorry for abandoning you earlier tonight," she starts. I know it's her. I identify her from the smoker's rasp and the accent, and the fact that no one else in the world has ever given me the nonsensical nickname of Tenth. But her voice seems obviously flat and tired.

I push myself further into a sitting position with my palm. "It's okay," I say. "Things happen."

The room is pitch black. I glance around as if it's not.

"No, I feel really bad," she admits.

I sigh through the nose. My eyes are starting to adjust now.

I pivot at the torso to glance at my pillow and the pocketknife I keep hidden underneath it.

"You know, Gokudera, you don't have to be scared of the Evil Twins." There's a beat of silence, and I turn to face forward. "You can take them in a fight – you did it once before. And I'll be right there to back you up this time."

More silence. I bend and lift my knees and tuck them to my chest with my free arm. I realize I'm covered in sweat from the walk a few hours ago, from now.

"Tenth…" The rest of the words die before they've even left her mind. I try to picture her, sitting wherever in her house (I have no idea how the interior looks), wearing a big T-shirt or something and no makeup, mouth hanging open. Maybe her lip ring is still in, maybe it's not. I don't know whether one has to remove it at night or if it can even be removed.

"Thank you," she says finally.

My heart flutters a bit inside my ribcage. "Any time—"

"But, Tenth, it's not about the fighting."

I furrow my eyebrows. The gravity around the pillow starts to pull at me, and I half-clench my fingers around the sheet to keep from falling backward.

"What do you mean?" I ask breathlessly. Something hard settles at the base of my throat. A pause ensues and I'm drowning. I shake my head.

"Tenth, I am afraid you don't understand. The Twins do not know who I am right now, but if they see me again they will say something. And in this town, if people like them say something, then everybody will know. Including my sister. Bianchi _cannot _know what I did."

I shut my eyes hard, grit my teeth and make a full fist around the sheet, and let all the energy go at once. "But why can't she know?" I ask. "You did it in self-defense. Besides, she's supposed to be taking care of you – it should be okay with her. She would understand."

"She _won't_." Gokudera sighs quietly on the other end of the line. I imagine her running her long fingers through her bangs or biting on her bottom lip or tapping her nails against a table or doing one of those other nervous things she does.

"Tenth, if she finds out, she's not going to care that I beat up those boys in self-defense. She's not going to care that we are family. She _will_ kick me out." Her voice cracks at the last syllable, and she stops and takes a deep, shaky breath and pauses, and I wait.

"She's the only person left in my whole family who is willing or able to help me," she says. "When she took me in, I promised her I wouldn't give her trouble. I'm already on thin ice as it is." She swallows hard. Her breathing goes shallow, erratic. She brings the speaker closer to her mouth, and whispers, "I can't be homeless again. I just can't."

The hard lump at the bottom of my throat starts to burn. I chew on the inside corners of my lips and lower the phone slightly from my ear.

Homeless.

There is another type-three in this town, after all.

I open my mouth, but instead of expelling words, my lungs expand. I shut my lips and press my knuckles to them, and worry whether I just made noise.

"I see," I mumble. I switch the phone from one ear to another. "I'm sorry."

She intakes a breath and then blows it out almost silently. "I cannot thank you enough, Tenth. For everything."

"It's been my privilege," I say.

I draw my knees even closer and notice how the wrinkles in the sheets fall around my ankles.

"You okay?" I ask.

Her voice jumps an octave. "Yeah, yes," she stammers. The conversation drops, a boulder turned to a pebble down a cliff.

My thumb starts to stroke back and forth over my knee, but I do not realize until I look down at it and watch the movement, detached from myself. The hardness in my throat expands throughout my whole body, heating it and weighing it down.

"Gokudera?" My voice is desperate as it escapes from my mouth, and I feel hopelessly small, until clacks sound on the other end of the line and she answers me. "Yes, Tenth?"

I think about all the friends I've left back home, all the friends I have here, and how Gokudera is so extraordinarily but inexplicably different. I'm her first thought in the morning. I'm the answer to every one of her questions. I am her constant. I don't think I've ever been this important to someone outside my family, or, I could venture, inside.

"Why do you still hang out with me?"

Something materializes in the air. Not quite a smell, not quite a sound, not quite a touch. It lingers, but at the same time it constantly feels new.

Her hum seems to come from nowhere. "What do you mean, Tenth?"

I can make out every detail of my room now.

My insides vacuum into my mouth and settle there, and I'm choking out the incomplete thoughts. "I mean, you know the whole situation with my dad. You know my family is in potential danger. But yet you keep associating yourself with me."

"Well, that's because I like you, Tenth," she says. The Something in the air teems with life. "You're… you're genuine, and realistic, and moral."

A tight heat coils over my cheeks and neck. I find my free hand squeezing my knee.

"You're kind of the only friend I've ever had." She adds the tiniest of chuckles. This is the first time I've heard her make that noise, I think. It makes my heart flop onto its side.

"Really?" I breathe.

I can see, in my head, her nose crinkling and her eyes narrowing. "I can't lie to you, Tenth. You're a much better person than you make yourself out to be." Without realizing, I start to mimic her smile, and mine grows wider. I can feel it, so consciously, so overwhelmingly among every other sensation.

"I feel the same way about you, Gokudera."

No noise travels between us, but somehow I can sense her, pulsating in the humid air, a silver halo eclipsing the bedside lamp. My body begins to quake. I lower my phone – accidentally almost drop it, fumble with it, laugh at myself, and press it to my other ear.

"Although, you know," I falter, "I did think you were pretty intimidating when we first met."

"Oh, Tenth, I'm sorry about that." She's like a puppy, wagging its tail in the middle of an apology.

I laugh again in a giddy little rumble. "Are you kidding? I wish I could be as fearsome as you are."

We talk deeper into the night. Hours pass without my noticing – or caring. It's so easy to talk to her like this. I don't know her past or her thoughts but I know her, and in the darkness I imagine her little movements along to every word she says, and it's almost as good as having her there.

It makes me happy to know I can be this for someone.

~0o.o0o.o0~

**Yay! The twins were little shitheads again. Also, do you sense a ship forming? I do. **

**Again, sorry, no linked reference notes because FFN is paranoid. **


	6. Chapter 6

A sheet of gray clouds that moved in overnight has sapped the color out of the whole town. Even the deep emerald of the lake has turned to dark gray. While Mom is out running errands, Dad and I struggle through the laundry. I do most of the folding, since such a task is difficult to even watch my recently left-handed father attempt.

I gaze down at the T-shirt draped over my arm.

Dad turns to me and smiles. "What're you thinking about, son?" he asks.

I tilt my head far to the side. "Not much." I stand straight, lay the shirt over the top of the dryer and slap it into thirds and then half. "Not much," I repeat, more for myself. I wonder what Gokudera could be wearing today. I've never seen her wear the same thing more than once.

The front door opens, and Mom announces that she's home. Dad pats me hard on the back and trots out of the room to greet her. I purse my lips and throw each garment over itself into the basket.

"Oh, Tsu-kun," she says, and I have to stop and balance the basket on my knee. Her head lifts off my father's hulky chest. She looks so small in his arms. Two lumpy plastic shopping bags have been dropped at her feet. "You don't have to do that."

"It's not a problem," I mumble. I turn and ascend the stairs before they can say anything else, even though most of these clothes go to their room on the first floor.

Thunder moans in the far-off distance. I pad down the hallway into my bedroom, plop the basket onto the carpet and close the door without latching. My body feels like solid metal.

There's been talk of returning home soon. Dad thinks that the gang has had about an average amount of time to forget about him, so we've started a preliminary packing process. The whole lake house has been filled with this icky-sweet feeling. I cannot shake my uneasiness.

Sighing, I crouch in front of my door for a moment and try to think, but all my mind is capable of is floating away from my consciousness. I ease onto my feet. The rush of blood from my head reminds me that I have not made any contact with the people in my regular town.

I mill about the bedroom, putting clothes away. Mostly I am able to ignore the soft purring thunder. I take a glance at the alarm clock on my nightstand. For a second I swear it shows the time last night when we finally hung up the phone. Now it's just over nine hours later, about lunchtime, and I've got a sinking sensation in my chest.

Something about last night's talk clings to me. I cannot explain it as other than internalized pressure. A load that I did not know existed has been lifted from my shoulders, but my insides are tight and jumpy with a sense of finalism. I dread that once my family leaves this place, we may never be able to come back.

I stop moving, turn my head toward the basket, and clench a fist to keep from dumping the whole load out the window.

When I come back downstairs, my mother and father are still holding each other, talking in whispers. I shield my eyes from them and sneak around the perimeter of the room to deliver the basket to the master bedroom. They notice me, I'm sure, but do not acknowledge me until I stand at the foot of the steps and speak.

"Why do we want to leave?" I ask.

Both of them bring their eyes to me, glance at each other, and close them.

"I'm just saying," I retort. "This is our safe haven, right? We've got everything we need here. Why can't we just stay?"

Mom's hands slide down Dad's chest. "It's not that simple, Tsu-kun," she says softly.

"How?" I stop myself from frowning.

"Your mother and I want nothing but the best for you," Dad explains.

"But I don't mind it here. In fact, I like it. I would like to stay."

I can sense the thick aura around my parents' heads. The thunder growls. My teeth start to clench.

"It's not impossible," I blurt, and I cannot stop myself there. "We can sell back the house and everything, pay them the interest and live here with no more worries."

"Tsu-kun!" my mom scolds. Her fingers coil around her palm and then retract from my father. She takes half a step toward me. "Don't talk about that sort of thing. You're too young to involve yourself in this."

"_Was _too young. I know exactly what's going on, and I pretended not to for so long because I knew you were doing this to give me a better life and I wanted to believe it and didn't want to seem ungrateful." I hit my fingertips against my sternum. "But I didn't earn this. I didn't want this. And if I'm so important, maybe you should actually listen to me. I want a good reason why we can't stay."

Mom and Dad stare at me. A pang rips through my chest, something weighty and cold. I swallow hard to make it pass.

I know they have sacrificed so much. My father's parents died when he was in middle school, leaving him nothing, and while in foster care his grief turned him on to the wrong group of people. He always talks about how he was saved by his love for the cute girl Nana in the class down the hall. In the end, though, I suppose one cannot know what one does not know. Perhaps I really am too young to understand.

My body stands so still that it trembles. I read them up and down and suddenly find myself battling a sting at my throat and eyes.

"Tsu-kun." She steps toward me more. "Listen." Her arms are outstretched, like she means to run and embrace me but only made it part of the way. "Even though it may seem otherwise sometimes, Iemi—your father and I have worked very hard for everything we have now. We have friends waiting for us in our hometown. That's where your school is. That's where you were born and raised, where I was born and raised, where your dad was raised. I know you're trying to think logically, Tsu-kun, but our hearts lie there. This town, where we are right now is not where we belong."

Dad had his eyes on me at the beginning, but as Mom spoke he slowly turned away. I can't read his expression. The thunder gives another warning growl. I open my mouth and draw breath, but it occurs to me that I have no power regarding this. Mom's dark honey eyes are flickering.

"I actually don't feel the same way at all," I mumble. I rotate a bit, setting one foot backwards on the next stair up. Here is where I care about people and they care about me. Here is where I know what is happening and can afford to not worry. Here is where I feel safe, powerful even, walking home alone in the dark. Here is where I sat on the dock watching my first summer fireworks show, and where I built castles over my sand-buried legs, and where a stranger shared her popsicle with me without hesitation. I bring my other foot parallel to the higher. I stare at Mom, waiting for her to speak. The ferocity empties from her eyes. She drops her arms and joins her hands in front of her.

I lift my gaze and direct it at my father. He must feel my eyes on him. He does not move. "Do you have anything to say?" I beg.

He sighs, and rubs the back of his neck with his good hand. All the sudden the house seems so dark. His fingers fail him, his hand sliding down and to his side. He eyes me like I have the answer.

I close my eyes, whisper, "Okay," open them, turn and make my way upstairs. Before I even reach my bedroom, I hear them whispering between thunderclaps.

0o.o0o.o0

I lay my forehead between my fingertips on the edge of the desk. "Oh, come on," I groan.

I pick up my head and click over and over on the Internet settings icon, and even that won't respond. For a moment I consider yelling for my parents, but they would not help me anyway. One of them is likely responsible for making this computer so slow in the first place. I don't know what they even do on it. I just want to play something for a bit – bored and going through serious MMORPG withdrawals all the sudden.

My skin starts to get hot, my chest tight, my muscles tense until I take a deep breath, stand, and simply walk away. The lake has swelled and the ground is sopping from the near-24-hour storm that passed through the area, and it's still cloudy. Maybe I can call and ask a friend to hang out indoors with me today.

I start down the hall, making my way to the stairs – when, on the landing, I swear I can hear a guitar strumming. I purse my lips and glance around. Then I dash down the steps to see if the one television in the whole house is on. No one is in the living room. The TV screen is an empty black.

"Huh," I say aloud. I trudge upstairs and hover around the desk for a moment, thinking this could be coming from a hidden tab on the web browser. But the sound is gone in this nook.

I begin to venture down the stairs again, so that I can ask whichever parental unit runs into me first whether this is all in my head or real. The thought strikes me that there is a window in the wall along the landing. I stick my fingers between two blades of the blinds, scissor them apart and peek through the gap. My eyes widen.

Just yards away, Hayase Gokudera sits on a window seat on the other side of the green siding. Her window is open, curtains are separated. She wears a baggy old T-shirt but with the same amount of makeup she always has, and her hair is tied into a stub of a ponytail, and until now I never would have guessed that she needs glasses. She holds an acoustic guitar, covered in chipped and faded black lacquer.

I yank my hand out from between the blinds and can't stop myself from smiling. I grab eagerly at the pull cord and drag it down, and all the blinds raise and I have a full view. Then, without a pause, I unlock the window at its frame and thrust the bottom panel upward.

It makes a horrendous noise, the old wood and metal scraping against each other for the first time in years. She jumps. Her eyes point wide in my direction for an instant, but upon realizing it's me, she shuffles in place and grins. "Tenth!" Her voice is hoarser than usual.

"Hayase!" I reply. "Hey!"

"I am so sorry for not coming to see you yesterday or today," she says. Already with the apologizing.

"It's alright," I stammer, putting up my hands. "I was more concerned about you than anything."

"You really mean that, Tenth?"

I nod. "Of course!"

She thanks me near-silently. I wonder why anyone would not be concerned.

The room behind her, from what I can see, is rather plain – off-white paint, wide oak plank floors. Multiple posters hang on the walls. The furniture is minimalist grunge style, and things are arranged in some organized chaos. I can't tell what purpose the room serves.

"Why do you have your window open?" I ask. "It's so steamy and humid outside."

"Oh, every window in the house is open," she explains. Her gesticulations match the exaggerated nuances of her expressions. "We've been cooped up since yesterday, so Bianchi got bored and went on a cooking spree, and now the whole house stinks – we're trying to air it out now that the rain has stopped. I mean, it'd be fine if the house smelled like one thing, but it smells like fish and cookies and lasagna and jus-just _no_." Her head shakes side to side.

I laugh and try to imagine it but cannot.

That subtle, full-face smile quivers onto her. "I got bored too and just whipped out my guitar," she says with a shrug, and she holds up the neck for me to see.

I nod and lean forward, pressing the balls of my palms on the bottom of the frame. "I didn't know you played guitar."

"Eh, I'm kinda rusty, actually," she confesses. "I play the piano and cello too, but haven't practiced in ages." She holds up her right hand and flaps it at the wrist. "My callouses are nearly gone. It hurts a little."

"Still, that's really impressive." I grin wider. She averts her eyes and says nothing. She's so bad at taking compliments.

Then she faces me, beaming again. "No, you're the impressive one, Tenth!"

I chuckle dismissively, and ask what she was just playing. She says she was improvising something and that it was nonsensical, but I honestly can't tell the difference between that and a real song.

At this she hitches the guitar up her lap and positions her hands. "Any requests?" She adjusts the instrument's placement a little more so that she's comfortable.

"Oh, gosh, uh…" I shrug my shoulders, bend and straighten my knees, sway forward and backward as I muse. My heartbeat is starting to get rabbitty. Finally a decent answer pops into my head. "The _Star Wars _theme?"

She tries to stifle a small laugh but fails. "Sure," she says.

And she starts to play. I don't have musical talent, so I probably don't appreciate it the right amount, but to me the song has a familiar feel yet sounds almost entirely strange.

She notices me staring at her – the serenity on her face, the way her fingers move, while she plays – and her lips pull tight at the corners and she tries consciously to focus on her hands.

When she stops, I clap. "Lovely," I say. At the same time, she sticks her fingers in her bangs and admits that she knows only the introduction and just made up the rest. Our eyes meet and we chuckle.

"Why don't you come over?" I ask.

All traces of smile disappear from her. She lowers the guitar and glances about.

"I can't," she says. She sets the guitar on the floor, props the headstock against the wall, and balances herself on her knees on the seat. "I'm, um, kind of grounded." Her shoulders shrug.

I furrow my eyebrows. "Grounded?"

Turns out, her sister was "crazy pissed" that she went to a party the other night without her permission. The two of them got into a huge fight and now Gokudera is not allowed to leave the house. Her phone was confiscated yesterday morning, too.

A cold lump sinks further in my chest with every word she speaks. "I'm sorry," I say. She waves a hand.

I move my lips a bit, suck my teeth, and lilt, "Yeah, I've just been playing videogames and watching TV all morning," like it's important.

"That's good, Tenth. You're doing what you like. I have been so, so bored." She chomps on her bottom lip. She has no idea.

"But still, we shouldn't be separated this long," I say, shaking my head.

She shakes her head too. "We really shouldn't."

~0o.o0o.o0~

**Dammit, Iemitsu! Dammit, Bianchi! **


	7. Chapter 7

Apparently us not leaving is no excuse for me not cleaning my room.

I swipe the dust rag over the top of my cubbies, picking up only about half of what I can see. The rag flops off the end of the unit and I look straight at the wall behind my bed, and the notion happens upon me that most teenagers would keep photographs and trinkets on top of things like this. My collection of videogames and manga is meager here compared to the one at home – my old home. It is also horribly disorganized.

I start to alphabetize, but notice some titles missing and dig for them. I gather all the _Gintama _volumes I own, and have no idea why the disc for _Final Fantasy IX_, which has been missing forever, was under my nightstand.

Hayase's copy of _The Hobbit _somehow made it into a cubby before. I pull it out and frown. I finished it over a month ago. She even lent me _The Fellowship of the Ring_, _The Two Towers_ and _The Return of the King_ as follow-up because I loved the first book so much.

I plop it onto the top of the unit. Maybe I'll be able to return it sometime soon.

While the thought is still in my head, I pick up my phone and shoot a text message to Hayase. _R u ungrounded yet? _

I spend the next couple hours cleaning, sorting, getting distracted. She never responds.

0o.o0o.o0

I know this has to be her when I see her step out of the Maserati parked next-door. She pads over to the trunk, opens it, pulls out a huge plastic bag in each hand and enters her house with them. I release the blind pull cord to cover the window, run into my room to grab _The Hobbit_, along with my phone and my knife (just in case), and am out the front door faster than I'd like to admit.

"Hi," I say, walking up to her.

She looks at me right away and smiles pleasantly. She has triple-pierced ears and a scorpion tattoo on her shoulder. "Hello." She seems a little confused until I introduce myself as the neighbor, and at that her eyebrows raise.

"I, uh…" I hold up the book in my hand and wave it back and forth a few times before I can get the words out. "I wanted to return this to your sister. Is she home?"

"She is." Bianchi lifts her chin and regards me from above for a few seconds, and to be honest it's a little scary. Drops of sweat begin to tease the back of my neck. She takes the book with her free French-manicured hand and stuffs it into the bag she's holding in the other. "I'll be sure to give this to her."

Her head lowers and she flashes another smile at me and turns to take another bag out of the trunk. I thrust my arms behind my back, stumbling forward.

"I can help you bring in those bags, if you want," I offer.

She looks over her shoulder at me. "That would be wonderful, thank you."

I scamper up to the car and pull out three bags, stringing my forearm through the handles of them. They hold various items, from baguettes to light bulbs. I follow her up the lawn, onto the porch and through the front door.

The great room just inside the entrance is styled modernly. Small pieces like picture frames and throw pillows are colorful, but for the most part everything is neutral-toned and rather stark. Shapes are simple. The sleek white couch is free of any stains. There is no dust or clutter to speak of.

"So, you must be that Tenth kid Hayase won't shut up about," she says. She leads me into the kitchen, which has frosted glass cupboard doors and stainless steel appliances. We set all of the bags on the island.

I half-smile. "She talks about me?" I stammer.

"Oh, yeah, she does." Bianchi heads out of the kitchen again, with me trailing her. "You're her favorite topic." We walk through the rest of the house, out to the car, and each taking one bag, clear out and close the trunk and bring in the last load. "At first I thought she was lying when she told me that your place was where she headed every morning, but after a while I figured out she was telling the truth."

She starts to rustle through the bags as I stand in the middle of the kitchen, listening to her and not knowing how to react next. She tells me to sit at the breakfast table if I like. I pull out a chair and kick off my shoes.

She continues, "I'm actually really glad we finally get to meet in person. The way she talks about you, I would think you're her own personal Jesus. She's noticeably better behaved since the two of you met. Happier too. I think you've had a good influence on her." She plucks specific foodstuffs out of different bags and shelves them in the walk-in pantry between the table and the refrigerator. Her voice level rises and lowers appropriately for however far she is from me or however much other noise there is. "Which is a blessing, really. My sister's had a tough life since practically before she was born. I was worried she would fall in with the wrong crowd here, but you've helped me get over that worry."

Bianchi stops all the sudden and looks straight at me. "Thank you."

"It's really not a problem!" I blurt. My heartbeat turns to a patter. I feel warm in the face and almost everywhere else.

She returns to putting away the rest of the items, and I stare out the window to my left. I have a direct view of the large deck behind the house, the marble green water, the clouds, the houses on the distant other side of the lake.

I turn to see Bianchi's backside. She's standing at the counter at the other end of the kitchen, doing something or other.

"Well, I don't know much about Hayase's past," I start, "But that doesn't mean she and I can't be friends."

Bianchi spins on her heels. The long, serrated knife in her hand startles me. I realize she's about to cut a watermelon.

"That's exactly the kind of person she needs in her life," she says.

I listen to her chop through the fruit. Then she stores what's left of it in the fridge, brings a plate of melon pieces to the table and sits across from me. I notice the gigantic diamond on her engagement ring. She gestures at the food, and I thank her and take some.

"Things were pretty rough when I first took her in," Bianchi begins. "She did slip up on occasion. Sometimes her depression spiked." She picks up a cube of melon and pops it into her mouth. "Her mother died when she was three, her uncle has terminal liver cirrhosis, our father is missing, my mother would never take her and we couldn't just leave her with the state. Lord knows I've tried my best. Daniele and I made her swear when we moved here that she'd be on her best behavior – absolutely no more drugs, cutting, fighting, running away or sneaking out." Her hands fold on top of the table in front of her. "I know you're probably upset that I grounded her, but I wanted her to know I mean business." She sighs. "She's old enough to be accountable for her own decisions anyway. I mean, she'll be a legal adult this September, in the eyes of the Italian government."

I nod and reply, "I understand," before I actually do. A chill charges through my body. Bianchi must notice me shuddering. She opens her hands, keeping her fingers laced together, points her thumbs upward and cocks her head.

"I'm sorry. I said too much. Hayase hates when I bring up the bad parts of her past."

She fakes a smile and pushes her palms together again. "Honestly, Tsunayoshi Sawada, I cannot thank you enough for the peace of mind you have brought us." For a moment she gazes at me the same soft, venerating way her sister does.

"It has been a pleasure," I say, and I smile right back at her.

Then her expression hardens. I chomp the inside corners of my mouth and gulp.

"You're not taking unfair advantage of her when she comes over to your house, are you?" she accuses.

I almost leap from the chair, shooting my arms into the air. "No, no! No way!" All the sudden my face feels red hot.

She furrows her eyebrows. "Because, if you are…" Her hands fly apart and slam onto the edge of the table, and she leans forward and stands and looms over me from across the table.

I shrink in my seat, lift my hands higher, and shake my head vigorously.

"I-I've never even touched her! Honest!" I spout. "I'd never dream of it! We are only friends! I respect her! I really do!"

She glares at me, piercing straight through my head, the muscles tight in her face. My heart races and the intense heat chokes me out of breath, and I grab onto the seat of the chair.

"Tenth?"

I gasp. Bianchi grits her teeth and lowers her head. She peers over her shoulder at her sister, who has just appeared in the doorway.

My eyes meet Hayase's and she grins at me, color rushing into her face. "Tenth!"

I scramble to sit up fully. "Hey," I breathe.

Hayase scurries to the table. She stops behind an empty chair and holds her fists to her chest.

"I'm surprised, but happy you dropped in, Tenth," she says. "I know it's only been a couple days but I've missed you terribly."

"It was the least I could do," I stutter.

She giggles a little and turns to address her older sister, and attempts a serious expression. "Don't scare him," she nags, jabbing Bianchi once with her elbow.

Now that they're standing close to each other, I can compare their appearances more easily. Bianchi's hair is a soft pink color, and thick and long and wavy, while Hayase's is silvery-white, thin, short, in choppy layers and straight as a board. Hayase has a more pronounced widow's peak, a smaller forehead, a rounder jawline, and overall more expressive features – a wide mouth, a slightly upturned nose, arched eyebrows. Bianchi's face is more graceful, more stoic, more mature. Bianchi has long legs, an hourglass figure and larger-than-average breasts. Hayase is flat chested and not as curvy or tall. In short, they look almost nothing alike.

Their skin is the same, though: porcelain-toned and flawless. They have the same eyes, too, alike in shape, size, placement and depth, and the long lashes. Bianchi's eyes are a mossy green color and Hayase's are somewhere between that and gray.

"I'm just looking out for you," Bianchi says in a singsong way. She takes a last glance at me and smiles, but her eyes are sharp with warning. Then she eases to a full stand, grabs the plate off the table and brings it to the sink to rinse the pink juice off of it.

Hayase scoots out the chair closest to her and sits and puts her elbows on the table.

"I think this is the first time you've ever been in my house, isn't it?" She glances about and then faces me again, not seeing my nod. "What brings you here, Tenth, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Uh—." I half rise from my seat to grab _The Hobbit _off the corner of the counter, and hold it in front of my face.

She recognizes it instantly and reaches for it. Her fingertips stroke the hard front cover. Her nails are fluorescent purple.

"Thank you," she says, but she retracts her hand from the book, shaking her head. "You don't have to return it, though. I would have gladly let you keep it."

I shrug. "I finished reading it anyway." I sort-of-not-subtly inch the book toward her.

"But you liked it so much, I don't think I could take it away from you," she says. She waves a hand from side to side at the wrist.

"You sure?" I ask, turning the top of the book toward me a bit.

"Positive." She smiles. "Besides, I have a second, paperback copy. I love _The Lord of the Rings_ too."

I stumble into a smile myself and hold the book against my sternum. Under my fingers I can sense the minute elevation of the title's ink on the front cover. It feels so smooth. A tingle spreads to my wrists. "Thank you," I tell her.

More time has passed than I realize: the ground has cut the sun in half. The sky has turned a pinkish orange behind the clouds, and pokes through the holes in the sheet of gray.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a shadow skulk into the living room – Mr. Rinato. Bianchi ducks out of the kitchen. He stands in the middle of the room, sticking his hands in his trouser pockets, and she approaches him and they talk to each other. Their voices are hushed but clear, even though I can't understand the language. Hayase can. She furrows her eyebrows in their direction. I study her profile.

There are so many questions I want to ask. The words bubble in my lungs and some jump into my throat, and I clench my teeth and swallow them down. What happened to reduce your family to this? Just what bad choices have you made? What goes on in your head? Where did it all go wrong for you? How else can I help?

Her mouth twitches open, but she closes it right away and turns to me, clicks her tongue and asks if I want to go outside.

"Sure," I say. I set the book on the table for later. I slip my shoes halfway onto my feet. We both stand, and I shuffle behind her out a sliding glass door at the far back of the great room. She raises her arms high over her head as soon as she steps out. I close the door once we're through it. The deck is smaller than mine and has lighter colored wood. We settle at the end of the deck, laying our elbows on the railing.

Her right foot lifts and hits the ground over and over. She slouches. I look at the tinted windows of the houses on the other side of the lake, listen to the choppy waves around the swelled coastline, feel the watery particles in the air.

Hayase's breathing starts to deepen and slow. She stares into the horizon, the orange so brilliant it's almost blinding, and I can almost physically feel her barrier falling – the anger, the jumpiness, the fear melting away. The gravity builds around her eyes. She sighs and her whole body seems to deflate, and her forearms bend upward, her wrists touch and her chin sits in her open palms.

I realize her elbow is just inches away from mine. All my attention goes to the space between the two points, and the questions return to me in a barrage.

A wet breeze lazes past us. The can lights in the landscape pop on one at a time. I shake my head and face forward and try to focus on the sunset, but I feel itchy everywhere. I blink and I'm looking at her again. Distantly, my heart pounds.

The sun is gone now, the light soon to follow. I open my mouth to inhale.

At the same time, her head jumps off her hands, and she leans back and lets go of the railing. "Let's go swimming," she says, and she looks at me with a desperate kind of smile curving her lips.

I take a hand off the rail and half-step back. "What, right now?" I ask.

"Yeah," she says, nodding. She lowers her head, crosses her arms over her torso, grabs the hem of her shirt, lifts it off and discards it without hesitation.

My eyes can't help but widen a bit as I watch her undress. I can see the bulges of her ribs and hipbones. She has a hole for a piercing at her navel, but no ring. Her skin is the same creamy pale color, and her bra is gray with fuchsia trim and polka dots. She slips off her ripped denim shorts and her panties have the same pattern. She sheds her bracelets, rings and necklaces too. The scars are right there – cuts on her thighs, track marks up her arms. They're faded but they still scream at me in the dim light.

She hoists herself up the banister and stands on her toes on top of it, and she looks over her shoulder at me with a smile. "Come on," she coaxes. She holds out a hand behind her in my direction. She has some Italian phrase tattooed in fancy script on her shoulderblade.

I tear my eyes from her figure, squeezing them shut. "Uh, oka—yeah." I pull my shirt over my head from the back of the collar and toss it on top of the clothes she has heaped where she stood earlier, and then slide off my shoes and take the knife and phone out of my pockets and lay them on the pile as well. The humidity pricks at my skin and makes me break into sweat instantly. I look up, doing my best to keep my attention on her face.

One at a time she wiggles the fingers she's held out for me. "Ready, Tenth?" she asks.

I nod, take a deep breath, sigh it out and clamor to the top of the balustrade. My heart is ready to leap out of my very chest and fly off and I don't know if it's her or the 25-foot drop from here to the water or the fact that I am very clumsy and the six-inch wide rail does not offer much room for error. I believe she can tell.

"Tenth, are you afraid? I'm sorry."

I turn to her and she's looking at me with her makeup-caked face. "No, I'm okay," I lie breathlessly.

In the effort to stop looking at her – my voice tingles in my throat, my every pore is sweating – I start to direct my eyes downward, but I catch the bad idea and crane my neck upward instead at the darkening clouds. I shake my hands at the wrists.

"Have you never done this before?" she asks.

"Once, probably, when I was younger," I reply, my voice cracking, "But that may just be faulty memory." I let out a nervous chuckle and quickly terminate it with a gasp. Without thinking I hold my arms out to my sides for balance.

I try to calm my breathing. But my head is spinning and my skin feels sticky and I can't stop thinking about the water below us and the questions and That Night and _her_ and what life even is in the first place.

"Here," I hear her say under her breath. Something touches my hand. It's another – hers. She wraps her fingers around my knuckles.

I gasp and spasm and whip my head around to face her. She smiles and squeezes my fingers.

For a minute, I'm frozen. Goosebumps bristle up the arm of the hand she's holding. My bones rattle with the ferocity of my heartbeat. The air out here is steamy, and thick, and I can't get enough of it into my body at a time. Hayase gazes at me, expectant but patient.

God, she is beautiful.

I look down at the shore across the lake, and slowly push all the air out of my mouth. "Okay."

We reposition our hands so that my fingers bend between her thumb and the tip of her index finger and her nails graze the outer edge of my hand. We swing them back and forth a little bit.

"Okay," I repeat. "Let's jump on three."

She says, "Alright," and I squint at the horizon.

"One." I sweep our hands forward. "Two." Our hands move some more. I bring my toes to the very edge of the rail. All the sudden a storm of nausea starts to brew in my stomach, and I make the mistake of looking down for a split second. I gulp. "Two and a half?"

She chuckles once. She shifts her balance and squeezes my hand again so hard her plastic nails dig into the skin, but not enough to hurt. I feel overwhelmingly hot, and both of our palms are sweaty.

I draw a large breath through the nose and point our hands forward, and every one of my internal organs squirm wildly inside me. I can't hold in the breath and let go and bring our hands backward. I do it again – in, forward, out, backward, in—.

"Three!"

There's this theory about time and the brain's perception of it stretching during a crisis. It takes one second to hit the water's surface. It feels so much longer. At once I am solid and weightless, the only thing and nothing.

Our hands fly apart right before we submerge. My eyes close. I hold my breath but the force of the impact knocks it out of me. I shoot feet, yards into the water, my body stinging from the friction. For an instant I am suspended, and then I start a natural ascent. I wave my arms and kick toward the top. My lungs ache for air.

I burst through the surface and try to inhale. Water blocks my throat. I hack and gasp and sputter – it's everywhere, in my ears, in my nose, in my pharynx. My heartbeat will not steady. I scramble to stay afloat, fighting the way my limbs convulse when I cough.

"Tenth?" I hear Hayase's voice, and her coughing a little too.

"Over here," I choke out.

A few seconds later I feel her wrap her arms around one of mine and drag me through the water until we can touch our feet to the shore, which is steeper here than it is at my house next door. We stay submerged up to our waists. She reaches around me to pat me hard on the back. The coughing ends and I start to pant. She takes her hand away. I press the middle segments of my index fingers to my eyelids and rub them, and then open them blearily.

The sky, behind the clouds, is that weird transitional shade of blue between sunset and night. My hair has fallen sopping around my face and neck. I push some of it out of my line of sight with my wrist. It's darker here, just under the deck's shade, though not for much longer.

Hayase's hair sticks to her skin. The shadow, liner, and mascara around her eyes cascade down her cheeks, the blush and foundation long gone.

We take one look at each other and laugh from the sheer joy of the moment.

"That was awesome," I breathe.

"Yeah," she squeals, nodding.

Our laughter peals off the wood towering above us and the water making rings around our waists. The sound comes from deep within and dissolves into the air to make it thicker. Her laugh is childish and hiccuppy. Mine is shrill like my mother's. I stop before she does, and watch her chest jump up and down, and listen to her inhalations. The noise atrophies without warning and she's grinning with her whole face, cheekbones raised, creases wrinkling. I can see her teeth, hear her wheezing. Her shoulders quiver. She looks at me. For the first time since I have met her, her eyes do not seem sad.

Butterflies jumble in my stomach and my heart throbs all over again. I wade a step toward her. I don't realize that I reach out and touch her arm until I feel her skin under my fingertips. She relaxes instantly.

"Hayase…" My breath hitches at the base of my throat.

Our eyes stare straight into one another, and this instant lasts longer than the fall, longer than the hanging still deep in the water, longer than the breathless struggle at the top. It almost lasts forever.

Her skin glows in the dark. The shine of her wet hair rings her face in something like a halo. I picture the wall of my room as a backdrop, the table lamp behind her, and imagine her sympathizing with all of my problems even though her problems are so much larger. Magic shows, phone calls, serenades. Cigarette after cigarette. Her father – how I guess her father looks pulling her onto his lap as he flashes a royal flush to his poker buddies. Bianchi's biscotti. _Mario Party_. The Sasagawas' yellow pontoon. Spatters of blood on her skintight dress.

I take another step forward and pull her close, and press my lips onto hers.

My eyes shut. My thumb strokes her arm. Our first kiss is chaste but rather long, and it ends silently. We barely separate before we kiss again, harder. The sound of us pulling apart is a low, wet pop. I tilt my head just the slightest and close my mouth around her.

Her arms lift and wrap around my neck, and she pulls up to me, warm, dripping skin on warm, dripping skin. She pushes her breasts against my bare chest. Our heartbeats seem to synchronize. With nothing to hold, my arms hang frozen in mid-air for a moment, and then I place one hand on her hip and the other on the small of her back, and we kiss again and again, going deeper and deeper. Her lips are tender from so much biting and lipstick, but her lip ring is cold.

She tastes of tobacco, most strongly, along with cheap silver, lake water, bitter makeup chemicals and something else I can't quite pinpoint. She starts to hang on me. Her back arches so that our whole torsos are touching. My lower hand drops a bit, my thumb lying along the lace hem of her panties. The fingers of my other hand, already on her bra strap, clench.

I start to feel dizzy and consciously inhale through the nose, though it's flattened against her cheek. The stud on the side of her nose pokes at me but I don't mind. The water sloshes quietly – one of her legs lifts out of it. A muffled orchestra of cicadas hums in the forest across the street. The mud and fuzzy plants tickle my feet and ankles. I graze my tongue along the inside of her top lip.

At last we pause, panting into each other's open mouths. I realize there's saliva all over my mouth and down to my chin. She turns her head not even an inch and plants a silent, sloppy, loving kiss on the corner of my lips. Then her head retracts and I set mine straight and we touch noses, eyes still closed. My head's angle shifts downward so that we touch foreheads, too. We squeeze each other even closer. And we remain there for many minutes, just holding one another and catching our breaths. Between us is the most pleasant kind of heat I have ever felt. Her skin is so smooth and slick. I stroke my thumb back and forth over her hipbone a bit, and she shudders and I stop.

We stand together for so long our upper bodies dry and our lower bodies turn clammy, and our breathing rates and heartbeats nearly return to normal.

She draws her arms apart and cradles the crook of my neck with her hands, and leans back at the shoulders. I open my eyes, and hers are open now too. Her face is about six inches from mine. She studies my expression a minute, and I trace how the streaks of mascara have dried on her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. Her lip starts to tremble. In an instant the unbridled glee her eyes had shown earlier is gone.

My lips come ajar, and my chest feels at once hollow and dense. I shake my head. "I _like_ you, Hayase." I pull back my lower arm so that my hand is more on her side.

Her head turns downward just slightly, as if she's pleading with me.

"I know," she says. Her voice is strained. "I like you too."

I smile. Now my heart rate has skyrocketed. I make a move to lean forward, to kiss her again – but she pulls away.

"I need to stop being selfish," she mumbles to herself, and she eases her arms off me and steps backward, my hands falling off her.

She stands a yard or so away from me, more difficult to see. She shakes her head. "Tenth, we cannot be together."

"What do you mean?" I blurt. I begin to gesticulate. "We just made out. You just said you like me back. I mean, I know that up until now, we've been only friends, but if we want to be something more then we can give it a try. Right?"

"It's not that," she says. I can tell she's trying her level best to keep her voice from breaking. She realizes she's failing in that endeavor, and turns her head to the side, takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales. Her eyes close and she repeats this. After a moment she looks at me.

"Tenth, you know I cannot lie to you. You know I would consider it a privilege and an honor to be anything to you that you want me to be." Out of nowhere her face contorts with emotional pain, and she shakes her head vehemently to dispel it, but to no avail. "But I would rather never see you again and know you are safe than keep you here in danger."

I furrow my eyebrows. "What?" I take a step toward her, and she mirrors it backwards. "Hayase, you have never put me in danger. If anything, you've protected me."

"That's not true!" She starts to hyperventilate. Her elbows bend and she clenches fists, and without thinking I lift my hands partway in the air.

"Tenth, I am so, so very sorry," she says. She bites her lip. I think I see tears pool under her eyes. She covers her mouth with one fist, but retracts it.

"Daniele Rinato works for the Vongola," she whispers.

"What does that mean?" I ask. All I can sense is that it cannot mean anything good. I give her a minute to calm down, but the silence only makes the tears come faster. She covers her face and muffles her sniffling so that I don't have to see her this way. The thought of her crying burns my throat and wets my eyes.

She lowers her hands from her face and gasps. "The Vongola are the people who lend your father money," she explains between hiccups. As soon as she mentions my father, my first tear falls. "They're tired of him running away every time they come to collect – so – they found your lake house and – they said Daniele has to do the deed within the next month. Daniele is secretly a hitman."

My hands fly to my mouth. Hot, salty tears hit my fingers. I could swear my heart has stopped.

"I'm sorry!" she says again. "I would have told you this a long time ago but I literally just found out two days ago and I've been grounded and… I'm sorry."

She meshes her fingers together, holding her hands in front of her and shaking them at me in imploration. "I couldn't know this and not tell you. I tried – the past few days, I've tried, but I was just in denial. I am horrible, I know." She takes a step toward me. "Please, you and your parents have to leave before it's too late."

I squeeze my eyes shut, lower my head, and press my hands harder against my mouth to keep from screaming. My leg moves backward, making noise in the water. I can hear her sniffling.

At length I lift my head and open my eyes. I take my hands off my face.

"I have to tell my parents," I say.

She nods, moaning softly. Her arms hang at her sides.

We stare one another in our bloodshot eyes, through the thick dark air – and there's so much I want to say that I have not, so much I want to understand that I do not – but neither of us has the strength to move. We can only stare, trying desperately to ingrain each other's images in our minds so we remember this night and each other and these lessons the rest of our lives, because there's this sinking feeling in my stomach that says this has to be goodbye.

I step back and take in one last look at Hayase in her underwear and runny makeup. That is how I want to remember her, a scarred and beautiful human being. And I turn around and walk up the inclined shore. I slosh along the beach to the stairs onto the empty dock, and from there onto the deck, where I grab my phone, shoes and knife and bring them to my house. I constantly check over my shoulder, expecting her to follow me, but never find her.

She can keep my shirt, and _The Hobbit_, too. I figure that's the least I can give her.

~0o.o0o.o0~

**This is not the end! I REPEAT: THIS IS NOT THE END.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Told you this was not the end. **

**Thank you to everyone who read the fic. Kisses! **

~0o.o0o.o0~

"So, we _do_ have to leave."

I nod and avert my eyes to my lap, squirming in the kitchen chair.

Mom and Dad exchange glances. Then Dad pulls away from her and shakes his head. "I knew that Gokudera girl was trouble from the start," he mutters.

Mom leans forward and frowns at him. "Iemitsu, please," she scolds, "If it weren't for her, we would still have no idea about this. She was looking out for us. Besides, it's not her fault – or Tsu-kun's, either."

My fingers coil around the seat of the chair.

She sighs, pauses, and sighs again. "Well, what do you suggest we do?"

"What else _can_ we do?" he says. "We pack and bail as soon as possible. Maybe even tonight."

Mom replies, "Okay," and I feel their energy focusing on me. I squeeze the wood of the chair until my knuckles turn white. A chill washes over my body.

I lift my head and squint at them beneath my bangs. "Okay," I mumble. The three of us regard one another for a minute, let it sink in that our family is not going to change like we thought – hoped – it would. We all stand from our chairs and break in different directions.

0o.o0o.o0

I carry the suitcase down the stairs by its handles to not make noise, and set it on the floor at the bottom. Both of the suitcases I brought here are full now. I even managed to cram more into them than I originally had.

The white PlayStation on the shelf under the coffee table catches my attention. I study it and wonder whether I can fit it, the controllers and some games into one of the bags. I list the games I like the most. Consequently, a lot of them Hayase and I played together.

Next to it, the Blu-Ray player displays the time. Five to three. I don't feel tired. I don't feel anything, actually.

I breathe in the dusty air, walk to my parents' room and stand in the doorway. The lights are off in here, just like in the rest of the house, but they carry flashlights, and I can vaguely sense their movement.

"I'm finished," I announce. Dad looks up, I think, for a second and then continues to do whatever he was doing.

"We almost are too," Mom says. "Just wait a little while longer, okay? We'll start loading the car soon."

"Okay." I turn on my heels and drag myself to the couch, and sit and stare at nothing.

Somewhere in the house, a clock is ticking stupidly loudly. I stiffen, clenching and unclenching my fingers around my knees. Any minute I expect to feel anxiety, disappointment, anger, grief. I'm waiting. It's going to rush at me and sweep me into my own self-pity. Clench. Unclench.

I cannot think about this house or where we will go next. The only thought in the back of my head, and almost constantly the front of it too, is Hayase. If I shut my eyes for longer than a second I see her subtle curves illuminating the dark. I open my eyes and aim them at the ceiling.

The way we parted does not sit well with me. I call forth some logic in hopes that it overrides everything else. This is what she wants. She said so – practically begged me. And even if she had not, it's still for the best that my family never sees hers again. So why does this feel so wrong?

I grit my teeth and ease to my feet, and start to wander around the house. Perhaps if I focus on taking in the last of these sights, I will not have to think.

Our kitchen is small and airy, and tins with vintage prints hang at various heights on the wall. The table at which we ate all our meals is tucked in a breakfast nook. Wine glasses dangle from racks over the bar counter. The guest bedroom sits long empty. Here is the other bathroom, the one with the cold stone floor, half underneath the staircase. I trudge up the steps one at a time, running my hand along the painted wall.

I stop on the landing and stare at the blinds for a moment. We have never had natural light in this house. Mom is too paranoid, as much as she loves it. Even the houseplants grow in the dark. I try to picture how much grander the house would look with natural light.

Sighing, I run my fingers along the edge of one wood blade, and fantasize about thrusting open this window and seeing Hayase, strumming her guitar and ready to talk to me. My hand drops and hits the edges of several blades on its way down until it hits the sill. Without thinking I grab onto the pull cord and ease up the blinds.

The window across the small alleyway is clear, and a light is on inside. My eyebrows lift. I unlock the frame, raise the bottom pane, and stick my head far out the opening. If I angle my head just right I can see part of a person sitting on a bed in the back corner of the room. It's unmistakably Hayase: that is her calf with the thick, long scar she got from mountain climbing. My heart leaps in my chest. I pivot and throw glances everywhere, my body twitching from the thought of her there, and finally an emotion hits me.

It's been only about four months since I saw her for the first time. I know it's ridiculous, but I cannot remember anything significant about my life before that barbeque. I have come to feel so empty and anxious without her by my side. There is no way I can leave her. Not like this.

I take my phone out of my pocket, unlock it and suspend my thumb over the keyboard. For an instant I consider texting her to look out her window, or maybe calling her – but I don't know whether she has her phone back, and decide to not risk it and return it to my pocket. I can't just knock on her door, either.

I bolt down the hall, screeching to a halt at each doorway to peer wildly into the rooms. There's got to be something. A flashlight for signaling, a radio to play, something. I stumble into my room and leap from point to point, rifling through drawers and cubbies.

At the top of the trashcan by my dresser is the old deodorant roller I threw out just yesterday. I pluck it out of the can, take off the lid, drop the rest and run to the landing window with it.

I've never had a good throwing arm, but I do believe a higher power exists who can make an exception just this once, please. I take a deep breath and hold it in puffed-out cheeks, bend my arm backward and lob it at Hayase's window. The impact makes such a loud _thunk_ that I start to sweat and worry that I may have broken the glass or woken other people. "Shoot," I spit, and cover my mouth. The airborne deodorant lid plummets to and smacks the muddy ground.

Within a few seconds she appears in the windowpane. She notices me instantly. Her eyes widen, her skin goes paler and her lips come apart. She looks so very strange with glasses across her face and no makeup. And she does wear her lip ring to sleep.

She half-stands-half-sits, frozen for a moment, staring at me as if I can't be real. She unlatches the locks on the frame slowly to not make noise. The bottom pane slides up.

"Tenth," she calls, her voice hoarse and hushed.

I grab the windowsill and lean partway out the opening. "Hayase—"

"Is your family leaving tonight?" she asks.

My breath catches in my throat. A cold chill plows from my feet to the tips of my fingers, followed by sweating. I slowly nod my head.

She says, "Good," but her eyes soften and lips droop in a mournful way.

I force myself to inhale and exhale.

"Listen, Hayase," I begin – and stop. It strikes me just how overjoyed I am at the sight of her, how my chest gets hot and tight and throbs, how my arms ache to hold her lithe, dripping body, how I crave the stench of tobacco and the smoothness of goldleaf calligraphy on a classic hardback and the way her eyes narrow when she smiles. Compared to these things, everything in the world is irrelevant.

I catch my breath and start again. "Listen. I'm really sorry that we have to part like this."

"It's okay, Tenth," she says. "It has to be this way, for your sake. I understand."

"No, you don't understand." My knuckles turn white around the windowsill. My head is burning, spinning. "I know this sounds crazy, but I don't think I'll be able to live without you."

I bend at the waist and use what leverage I can to hoist myself onto the sill. My legs are bent underneath me and spread just a bit, and my knees jut into the outside air while my ankles hook around the lip of the sill inside. For a fraction of a second, the sheer height throws me. I cling with both hands to the frame running side to side behind my neck. I wait a few seconds to balance myself and let the adrenaline plateau, and then lock my eyes onto hers, and let go of the frame with one hand to extend it to her.

"Hayase…" The humid air floods past me and into the house, raising hair and goosebumps on my arms.

"…Will you come with us?"

I straighten my elbow and spread my fingers.

She stares at my outstretched hand. Her muscles visibly tense, and her chest stops moving for a few seconds and then rises and falls frantically. At length, she shakes her head ever so subtly and takes half a step backward, bringing her foot from the seat to the floor.

"Please?" I ask.

"I can't," she says. "I just—." She breathes in through her mouth and holds the air in her chest. Her desperate eyes meet mine again. "I'll only burden you. I'm a troublemaker and another mouth to feed."

"No, you won't," I reason. I lower the outstretched arm to hang at my side and grip the frame more tightly with the other.

"My mom adores you. You already do more than anyone's fair share of work around the house and you don't even live with us. My parents wouldn't mind, I guarantee you, and I would be so happy."

"I'm not supposed to run away anymore," she begs.

Every part of my body is in the best, most dizzying kind of pain. "So what? You've broken some other rules before."

"My sister will look for me," she stammers. Her volume has been increasing and she realizes this and quiets herself a bit. "Daniele will look for your father, too. There will be nowhere for all of us to hide."

I turn my head to the side for a second and then face her.

"I don't care. You can trust us. We will cross that bridge when we get to it," I say.

She continues to gawk at me, speechless now. Her hands are in fists. I shake my head and lift my arm toward her again.

"Please, Hayase. Please, just come with us." Somehow, in the prickly swelter, I find myself shivering. I can barely breathe. I gasp, fist my hand and draw it to my chest.

"We need each other, Hayase. Without you I would have just remained the dumpy and awkward and unaffected and uncomfortable person I was before. You've opened my eyes to so many things. And now I'm addicted. It's no fault of your own. I can be selfish – and I'm really sorry for that – and you have already done so very much for me, but. I want to stay with you, if you will let me. I can be your new home. I'll do my best, you know. I'll accept you without even a second thought. I'm _begging_ you. Just—"

I inhale deeply and sigh, and slowly extend my arm toward her again.

"Run away with us, please. I promise it will be the last time you ever do."

My fingers unfurl. In the back of my mind, I sense tears boiling behind my eyelids for the second time tonight.

She shakes her head at first, but stops herself. She gazes at my hand, and gradually beyond it. Her cheeks tint with pink, without the help of rouge, and her breathing steadies. She swallows hard. She opens her mouth to speak but immediately hinges it shut, and then bites on her bottom lip. Her eyes narrow and her shoulders relax.

Mom creaks halfway up the staircase and leans forward to talk to me, gripping the handrail. "We're done. We need help loading the car now."

I duck my head under the frame and face her. "Just one more minute," I whisper.

"What are you doing in the window?" Mom asks, cocking an eyebrow.

"Trying to get a yes." I dip and move my head to the other side of the pane, and nod once at Hayase.

Her teeth release her lip, the silver ring flicking into place. Her eyes come back into focus and her head tilts to the side just slightly.

"Tenth," she says, almost breathless, "I would follow you everywhere."

I exhale into a grin and can't bring myself to breathe back in. She returns my smile – it overcomes her every feature.

She rises onto her toes and then drops onto both full feet again. "Give me just a couple minutes." She holds up an index finger. "I'll pack only the essentials."

I start to retract my arm. "Go, go. Meet us at our car when you're finished." I give her a thumb-up with my free hand, and she nods vehemently, eases the window shut and scampers out of view.

I climb out of the window, placing one shaky foot on the landing at a time. The pane is difficult to close. It slides down into its track, and I lock it and let the set of blinds fall over the glass. I turn on my heels to make my way downstairs, but Mom is still standing there, eyebrows furrowed, trying to understand the situation – blocking me.

"Hayase is coming with us." I try to sounds as casual as possible, but my grin won't go away. The jitters teem in full ferocity in my chest and stomach.

Mom regards me for a few seconds to process this. She nods and, looking beyond me, says, "Okay, then," smiles a little, and makes her way to the first floor of the house, with me close behind. I grab my two bags at the foot of the staircase and wheel them through the living room and out the front door.


End file.
